Mark Johnson tells us about his great-uncle and the role he and his fellow airmen played in the fight to defeat the Luftwaffe in the Second World War n November 2013 I had the privilege of delivering a short address at the opening of an exhibit at the RAF Museum in Hendon. Entitled ‘Pilots of the Caribbean’, it recognized the contribution that almost 500 West Indian aircrew made to combat operations during the Second World War. My great-uncle was one of these men. Flight Lieutenant John J. Blair DFC was born in rural Jamaica in 1919. The youngest of eight children, he was educated in a tiny country school before attending teacher training college in Kingston. When war broke out in Europe and the RAF was forced to battle the Luftwaffe in the skies over England, John Blair decided to join the fight. Descended as he was from former slaves, he told me later that he and many others in the Caribbean feared what might happen to them if the
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Nazis defeated Britain. ‘While we were fighting we never thought about defending the Empire or anything along those lines,’ he said. ‘We just knew deep down inside that we were all in this together and that what was taking place around our world had to be stopped. That was a war that had to be fought; there are no two ways about it. Few people think about what would have happened to them in Jamaica if Germany had defeated Britain, but we certainly could have returned to slavery.’ Considering the fact that during his childhood John had co-existed with elderly former slaves, this threat was both real and palpable. In my address I therefore began by providing more context to explain why these men volunteered and why it is important to describe their role to the current generation.
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The Nazi threat By late 1941, Nazi Germany had conquered most of Europe and North Africa, from western France to the gates of Moscow, and from northern Norway to the deserts of Egypt. The predations of German submarines threatened the survival of millions of women and children, not only in the British Isles but elsewhere. More than twenty Uboats (submarines) operated in the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico, for example, where they sank more than 50 merchant ships and oil tankers during the little-known Battle of the Caribbean. By 1945, 25 per cent of Nazi
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Military History Germany’s labour force was made up of slaves taken from across Europe; probably one of the largest and most concentrated uses of slavery since the Emancipation and second only to the Soviet Gulag for its size and scale. One third of the entire world’s known works of art were looted by Nazi Germany’s officials and 40 or 50 million people would die in Europe during a conflict started without any justification by Adolf Hitler. A very substantial proportion of those killed were civilians, most of whom were not killed as a result of battles or bombing, but were deliberately exterminated by one or other of the totalitarian powers. It was against this backdrop that the men of the Caribbean volunteered to fight. John J. Blair was serious, erudite and quietly brave. Like many of the volunteers, he was selected for RAF navigator training in Canada. Others were trained as pilots, with several of the Caribbean men eventually operating Spitfires and Typhoons over Europe. Many became bomber pilots while a large number served as air gunners. From December 1944 to May 1945, John Blair flew 33 operational missions over Europe, many to strongly defended targets in Germany. Like his British and Commonwealth comrades, he faced enemy fighters, flak, mechanical failure, mid-air collisions and the weather. But unlike one third of his fellow Caribbean aircrew volunteers, he survived the war.
Awarded for bravery Uncle John won promotions and the Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC) for his courage under fire and for his devotion to his aircraft and its crew. His medal citation tells of his determination and coolness under fire and mentions an incident in which he continued to navigate the plane towards the target after already having lost one engine. The crew bombed at an altitude 3,000 feet below the rest of the force, a particularly perilous undertaking. John’s squadron, No. 102 (Ceylon) Squadron, had the dubious honour of coming joint third for the highest casualty rate in Bomber Command; the Squadron lost eight aircraft and w w w. d i s c o v e r y o u r h i s t o r y. n e t
the bulk of their crews just during the first four weeks of his period with it. After the war he remained with the RAF until 1963, when he returned to Jamaica, now a qualified barrister. At least one West Indian, Lancaster navigator, Cy Grant of Guyana, and one West African, navigator Johnny Smythe of Sierra Leone, were shot down and held captive in German Stalag Luft camps from 1943 until 1945. Smythe had the unusual distinction of not being lynched because of his colour. The Germans who came to kill him on landing were so stunned by the sight of a black airman that they just stood and stared at him in slack-jawed silence. Both men lived to tell the tale of their captivity and they were liberated when the tanks of the Soviet Red Army crashed through the wire of their camps in May 1945.
Post-war achievements The Caribbean aircrew volunteers did not simply fade away after the war. They formed part of a leadership cadre that would do great service for their respective nations. Many became active in national independence movements and some, such as Errol Barrow from Barbados, were future prime ministers. Others would become government ministers or ambassadors, as did Squadron
JOHN BLAIR DFC, with Transport Command in the 1950s.
RAF TAIL GUNNER Lincoln O. Lynch from Jamaica stands next to the turret of his No. 102 (Ceylon) Squadron Halifax in 1944. Lynch shot down a German night fighter on his first operational sortie.
Leader Ulric Cross of Trinidad, or leading medical doctors, like the great Jamaican Olympic gold medallist and RAF pilot Arthur Wint. The men would also raise families, passing their deeply held beliefs in justice, morality and fair play on to their children and grandchildren. Mosquito navigator John Ebanks, also a teacher from Jamaica, summed the whole matter up far better than I ever could when he told me, ‘I didn’t go to fight for King and Country. I went to fight for myself. I went to fight for all the small countries of the world that would otherwise be ruled by bullies.’ I
Discover more Caribbean Volunteers at War: The Forgotten Story of the RAF’s ‘Tuskegee Airmen’ by Mark Johnson, can be pre-ordered for the special price of £15.99 with FREE UK postage by using the code 151173. Call 01226 734222 or visit www.penand-sword.co.uk and enter the code.
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