Derek Erskine—Double Survivor

Derek Erskine is a rarity in having survived two hazardous flying careers—the first as a fighter pilot for most of World War Two, and the second as a pilot in topdressing’s dangerous pioneering days in New Zealand. In this first of two articles, Rob Neil tells the first of Derek’s two flying career survival stories.

By rights, one might have expected Derek Erskine to have become a sailor during World War Two. Born in 1921 in Newcastle—then one of the largest shipbuilding and repair centres in the world—his father was an engineer involved in building battleships for Vickers-Armstrong, and the young Derek had an interest in the sea and was an active Sea Scout. However, for two years before the war, he went to night school to study accountancy and bookkeeping, and was awarded certificates by the Royal Society of Arts for his pains.

In 1937, Derek’s younger brother Noel had joined the RAF as an aircraft apprentice, so at the outbreak of WWII, when the 18-year-old Derek was called up in his trade, he also decided to join the RAF and was initially stationed in Cardington—the site of the massive hangars for the R100 and R101 airships, which still stand today.

From November 1939 until March 1941, Derek remained a pay-clerk for the RAF until being accepted for flying training. In May 1941, along with hundreds of other young men, he set sail aboard the cruise liner Windsor Castle for Canada as part of the RAF’s Empire Training Scheme. During their journey to the American continent, they were escorted by the battleship Rodney, which was heading to Boston for repairs after its historic encounter with the Bismarck.

After the strict rationing in England, it was a delight for the men aboard Windsor Castle when they arrived in Montreal and had their first taste of plentiful Canadian food.

After a five-day train journey, the men reached Calgary and the 31st Elementary Flying Training School, where they began their training in Tiger Moths. In the two short months he was at Calgary, Derek met a young lady by the name of Ellen Jacobson. The pair found time to visit local picture theatres, restaurants and the famous Calgary Stampede. Before Derek’s time at Calgary was up, he told Ellen that if he survived the war, if she were still agreeable, he would ask her to marry him. He did, she was and he did, and since 1946, Ellen has been Mrs Ellen Erskine.

Life-changing romantic interludes aside, Derek’s completed his initial training satisfactorily and was posted to Moose Jaw for Service Flying Training in Harvard IIs. This training covered the basics of what fledgling pilots needed to become fighter pilots, and included instrument and night flying.

Derek says that the landscape of the Canadian wilderness was so featureless that they often descended to rooftop height to read railway signs in order to navigate. At least that is the reason he gives for the kind of frequent low flying evidenced by the accompanying photograph of a train taken from a Harvard cockpit!

On the 24th of October 1941, at the grand old age of 20, and with a total flying time of only 147 hours and 25 minutes, Derek had completed his initial flying training successfully and received his RAF pilot’s “wings”.

Just as his journey to Canada aboard the Windsor Castle had been, Derek’s return to the UK was a swift one aboard the USS Lafayette (the name given to the famous French liner Normandie after its seizure by the Americans in 1939 after the fall of France). The Lafayette/Normandie was fast enough to require no escort at all.

Upon his return to England, Derek was posted to RAF Montrose in Scotland where he trained in Miles Masters in preparation for flying Hurricanes. His training at Montrose included formation flying for the first time, aerobatics and cross-country navigation. On the 31st of December, with a total flying time in his logbook of 170 hours and 40 minutes, he flew a Hurricane for the first time.

On the 11th of January 1942, Derek was posted to No. 57 Operational Training School at Hawarden in Cheshire. This was a Spitfire training establishment where trainees were taught the skills they would need to fight a war in the air by experienced Battle of Britain pilots. Here they learned such skills as formation flying, cross-country navigation, air gunnery—including firing at towed drogues and air-to-ground gunnery—interception, dogfighting and low flying (which Derek had already been practising in Canada!).

By mid-April 1942, with a total time of only 214 hours and 40 minutes in his logbook, Derek was posted to his first operational squadron—164 Squadron, stationed at Skeabrae in the Orkney Islands, where their job was to protect the Royal Navy’s major base at Scapa Flow from being photographed by German aircraft. Derek recalls Skeabrae as being a desolate, miserable place frequently buffeted by 70 mph winds and permanently shrouded by cloud.

After five months at Skaebrae, the squadron moved to Peterhead as the resident defenders of Aberdeen. It was here that Derek experienced his first engine failure and made a forced landing back onto the aerodrome from 2,500 ft. Although he reached the aerodrome, he broke an undercarriage leg on a fence post and came to rest on the grass with his wingtip scraping the ground.

At the beginning of October, the squadron made a brief journey to Tangmere, in the South of England, to help escort the first American 100-bomber raid over France, where the Americans bombed the rail yards at Lille. Once over France, Derek and a number of other fighters were designated to leave the bomber force to conduct a fighter sweep over Abbeville, Neuf Chapel and Dieppe to try and entice the German Air Force to fight. However, the Germans were after the bomber force, which—thankfully—suffered no losses while downing three German fighters.

After this mission, the squadron returned to Peterhead.

In February 1943, the squadron was re-equipped with Hurricane IIDs—which were equipped with four 20 mm cannons—to become a tank-busting squadron. Derek and five other pilots were sent to the No.1 Special Low Attack Instructor School Milfield, Northumberland, where they were equipped with Hurricane Mk IVs. The Mk IV was equipped with two 40 mm cannons and rocket-propelled missiles. With these aircraft, Derek and the others took part in exercises with the army on Salisbury Plain.

At this stage, they were not permitted to fly the Hurricane Mk IV over France because the new 60 lb rockets it could carry were being saved as a secret tank-busting weapon for use in Europe after the invasion of France.

The aircraft that 164 Squadron flew carried four rockets under each wing. Four of the pilots were allowed to fly over the English Channel and attack German E-boats, but they were not allowed to log their flight times or talk about these operations. Later in the year—by which time Derek had left and gone to Malta—these were officially allowed as legitimate operations.

Coincidentally, later in the war, by which time he was flying Spitfire Mk IXs, Derek found himself escorting Hurricanes of 6 Squadron conducting similar missions against German shipping in the Aegean Sea.

When he was based at Malta, Derek flew Spitfires and his squadron was frequently scrambled to intercept high-flying Me109s that were taking photographs of Valetta Harbour. It was here that Derek first fired his guns at a German plane. The squadron also took part in fighter sweeps against Sicily, when they often carried 250 lb bombs for dive-bombing operations.

The squadron flew numerous fighter support missions for US Flying Fortresses as they bombed targets in Sicily, and when the Allies invaded the island, Derek and his squadron mates covered the landings. For the next week, they flew patrols over the beaches in support of the advancing forces. They also flew escort missions for Australian B-25 squadrons.

In November 1943, Derek was posted to 87 Squadron, which was then stationed at Borizzo in Sicily and flying Hurricane IICs. The timing of his posting to 87 Squadron meant that in addition to the Hurricane IIC, Derek also flew three of the four Spitfire variants with which the squadron was equipped at various times during the war, including the VC, VIII and IX (he did not fly the VB with 87 Squadron).

In March 1944, he was sent to collect a Spitfire from a storage depot in Algeria. During his return to Palermo, he encountered strong headwinds and bad weather, and knew he would not make Sicily. Heading back to North Africa, he climbed into cloud and was prepared to bail out if he had to. When his engine stopped and he dropped out of the cloud, he was within gliding distance of the African coast and managed to put down safely on the only bit of level ground for miles.

Having informed the nearest RAF station that he was OK, he was able to relax. After the stress of nearly three hours battling the elements and his second deadstick landing, it was perhaps not surprising that he fell asleep in his cockpit. When Derek awoke to tapping on his cockpit canopy, he was startled to find himself surrounded by a band of Arabs and their camels. The chief of the band introduced himself in French, to which Derek responded in his own schoolboy French. Derek managed to make it clear he was OK and explained that he had run out of petrol. He asked the old chief if he would like to sit in the Spitfire. He did, but getting him in proved to be something of a challenge. Eventually, he was accommodated in the small cockpit, and Derek explained the various controls and the gun and cannon buttons. Derek suspects he was probably the only the only Arab chief to have sat in a Spitfire.

When the Arabs eventually left him and it began to get dark, Derek got tired of waiting for someone to help and set off on foot for the RAF station, whose lights he could see several miles away. Throughout his walk, he was pursued by a pack of barking dogs, which he fended off by throwing rocks at them. The dogs did not give up until he reached the fence surrounding the RAF station and clambered through it. After finding his way to the mess hall, he managed another sleep, only to discover the next morning that he had walked through a minefield!

Having survived another forced landing, a five-mile trek through the desert pursued by a pack of dogs, and a minefield, it was time to try and get the Spitfire back to the airfield.

The piece of flat ground where he had landed was not long enough for the Spitfire to take off normally. Everything possible was removed from the aircraft to lighten it, and only enough fuel was put in to get it the short distance to the nearby airfield. The Spitfire’s flaps had only two positions—either fully retracted, or fully down for landing. Because they didn’t have any intermediate settings to provide additional lift, Derek used some wooden chocks to lock them partially down, which he hoped would give him enough additional lift to get off the ground.

With the improvised high-lift devices in place and only a few gallons of fuel in the tank, the Spitfire was pushed as far back as possible on the flat ground. Then, with the assistance of a group of 20 or so Italian prisoners of war who held onto the wings and tail, Derek held the brakes and ran the engine to full power. At his signal, the POWs all let go at once, and the Spitfire shot forwards and leapt off the ground in around 50 yards.

After flying the short distance to the RAF station, the Spitfire was refuelled, everything was put back in place and Derek finally completed the journey to Palermo with no further incident.

From Palermo, Derek’s squadron followed the 8th Army through Italy, moving to Catania and then Foggia, Perugia, Loreto, Fano and Borghetto. The squadron provided close support to Allied ground forces, attacking enemy gun positions, tanks and vehicle convoys, using information from photographs taken by reconnaissance aircraft. Derek says that sometimes, the latest photos were still wet when they were handed to them in their cockpits.

Derek recalls being tasked to attack a train leaving Skopje that was reportedly taking looted treasure to Germany. He and another pilot flew for 90 minutes at low level to get there, spent 10 minutes attacking the train and made the same 90-minute flight home without incident—a long mission for two lone Spitfires over extremely rugged enemy-held terrain. The mission was a success and destroyed the train, but Derek says it was a big relief to return to the relative safety of flying in Italy.

In addition to its ground support work, the squadron escorted Hurricanes on low-level shipping attacks, escorted US Marauders on attacks on rail yards in northern Italy, and escorted Walrus and Catalina air-sea rescue missions off the coast of Yugoslavia.

In July, 1944, Derek was returning from escorting a bombing raid when he experienced another engine failure. When he called for a homing signal to the nearest strip, the voice on the radio directed him to steer a course of 090 degrees, which, from his position at the time, would have taken him out over the sea. It was a German trick and showed that they were constantly listening to Allied radio traffic.

As Derek neared the ground, he saw an airstrip in the process of being built; it was just eight miles behind the front line, and had scrapers and rollers hard at work all over the strip. He dodged and weaved his way successfully among them as he landed in silence, much to the surprise of the workers on the ground.

He was only a warrant officer at the time, but with no rank badges visible on his uniform, he was treated like royalty during his overnight stay.

Soon after this incident, Derek recalls a satisfying air-sea rescue mission in which he located the first survivor of a crashed Liberator, which led to the rest of the crew being located.

In September 1944, Derek led a four-plane attack on a German headquarters at San Giovanni. Observers watching the strike reported that they succeeded in killing the colonel in charge and that four ambulances were required to take all of the other casualties away. The day after this strike, Derek’s squadron attacked three Tiger tanks with 500 lb bombs and knocked out two of them.

In December 1944, Derek was one of six pilots in his squadron assigned to attack the SS headquarters in Bolgna. On that occasion, they had to fly low across the city and down the main street to hit the building at the end of it—with strict instructions not to hit the girls’ school on the opposite corner!

When the squadron moved to Leghorn, near Pisa, they enjoyed luxurious living conditions with proper bedrooms—not tents and marquees—and had Italian chefs and waiters attending to them.

In January 1945, Derek—by now a Flight Lieutenant—recalls being in the officers’ mess and talking with the squadron’s CO and the CO of 91 Squadron, the famous Neville Duke. Duke had been posted back to England as a test pilot, and asked Derek if he would like to take over 91 Squadron after he left. Derek did, of course, but unfortunately, when he submitted his logbook and papers to Central Command in Cairo, they realised he had been flying without a rest since 1943. It was the end of Derek’s operational flying—and 91 Squadron had to look for someone else to be its new CO.

From Italy, Derek was posted to Cyprus, where he commanded No. 1560 Met Flight. Cyprus was an English colony then, and the pilots received an extra 10 shillings a week just for being there. Flying Hurricane IIBs, the flight (comprising Derek and five other pilots) had to make two flights a day to 25,000 feet, stopping every 1,000 feet to record the temperature taken by a wing-mounted thermometer. This, and the other information they obtained, was passed to the Met Department to aid their forecasting.

With the Hotel Kyrenia—a first-class Mediterranean resort—costing 10 shillings a day at the time, Dereks says one pilot stayed there and did the flying while the rest of them took a week’s holiday.

In only his second day on the job, Derek was just 20 minutes into his flight when he a glycol pipe burst, sending the temperature off the clock and forcing him to shut down his engine. Time for yet another forced landing—Derek was getting good at it by now.

To give him more to do and keep him interested, Derek took on the jobs of catering officer and transport officer, which gave him plenty of opportunity to visit the markets to order supplies, as he had his own Jeep as transport.

In December 1945, Derek left Cyprus for Cairo and then home to be demobilised. After a thoroughly enjoyable sea voyage to Marseilles, during which Derek says he was “really spoiled” by the Italian crew, he travelled by train through France to the Ferry at Calais and home to England. Then, after a week of medicals and checks to ensure he had not brought any foreign bugs or diseases home with him, three months of leave marked the end of six years and six months of RAF service for Derek. With 884 hours and 45 minutes of military flying time in his logbook, he was once again a civilian.

Derek had made up his mind to emigrate to New Zealand, where his sister Jean and her husband were farming in Canterbury. However, the shipping company told him there would be a year’s wait for a passage!

As he had promised, he wrote to Ellen in Calgary to tell her he was home and made arrangements to get her to England. She arrived on the RMS Mauretania II on the 3rd of September 1946—bringing her wedding cake with her from Canada—and they were married on the 26th.

After both taking up jobs and living in various places, eventually, they received word that two berths were available on the MS Akaroa bound for New Zealand. On the 13th of December 1947, Derek and Ellen Erskine set sail from Southampton for a new life together in New Zealand.