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Hurricane Force by Robert Taylor.
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Hurricane Force by Robert Taylor
- The Signatures
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Group Captain Frank Carey (deceased)
Born 7th May 1912. Frank Carey joined the Royal Air Force n 1927 as a 15 year old apprentice. Carey was first employed as a ground crew fitter and metal rigger but in 1935 Frank carey was selected in 1935 for a pilot's course. He was then posted as a sergeant pilot to No 43 Squadron, the Fighting Cocks, whose aircraft he had been servicing. Demonstrating exceptional panache in the Hawker Fury biplane fighter, Carey was selected for the squadron's renowned aerobatics team which took part in many air displays. In early 1939, No 43 Squadron was re-equipped at Tangmere, Sussex, with the eight-gun Hurricane fighter.
During World War Two, Frank Carey scored 25 enemy aircraft destroyed, one of the highest Allied fighter pilot totals. Carey opened his account at Acklington in Northumberland, when he shared in the destruction of several Heinkel shipping raiders during the cold winter of 1939-40. This was followed by a short spell at Wick defending the fleet at Scapa Flow before he was commissioned as a pilot officer and posted with No 3 Hurricane Squadron to Merville in France after the German invasion, adding to his total. After six days day of continuous combat, during which he bagged some 14 "kills" Carey was shot down. He had attacked a Dornier 17 bomber and was following it closely down in its last moments; the pilot was dead but the surviving rear gunner pressed his trigger to set Carey's Hurricane alight, wounding him in a leg. The fire stopped, and Carey lwas forced to land between the Allied and enemy lines. Carey managed to get back by hitching a lift with a Belgium soldier on the back of his motorbike until he was picked up by a Passing Army truck which got him to a casualty station at Dieppe, he was put on a Hospital train but the train was attacked by the luftwaffe afer the attack the Engin eDriver had detache dthe train form the carriages and left the wounded. The wlaking wounded managed to push the carriages to the relative safety of La Baule on the coast. Frank Carey along with some other RAF personel managed to obtain a abandoned Bristol Bombay whihc they flew back to Hendon with Carey manning the rear gun. Carey found himself listed as "missing believed killed" and awarded a DFC and Bar to add to an earlier DFM. He returned to Tangmere just in time for the Battle of Britain.
During the Battle of Britain, Carey was shot down during an attack on a large formation of German aircraft, when after several ships had been lost from a Channel convoy during the summer of 1940 Carey and five other Hurricane pilots of No 43 Squadron arrived on the scene to find enemy aircraft "stretched out in great lumps all the way from the Isle of Wight to Cherbourg. Frank Carey said about the combat "At the bottom were Ju87 dive-bombers; above these Me 109s in great oval sweeps, and above them Me 110s. Three of us got up into them. It was absolutely ludicrous - three of us to take on that mob." At one stage I found himself "hooked on to the tail of the last of an echelon of 109s and started firing away quite merrily. Then I had an awful wallop. It was an Me 110 with four cannons sitting just behind me. There was a big bang and there, in the wing, was a hole a man could have crawled through."
Carey was slightly wounded by an explosive bullet, then a second Me 110 attacked and caused damage to carey's rudder; but he managed to return to Tangmere only to be fired at by its anti-aircraft guns. That he managed to land was, he said, "a great tribute to the Hurricane." He had been in combat up to six times a day when on August 18, the squadron's losses enabled him to lead No 43 for the first time in an attack on a mixed bunch of fighters and Ju 87 dive-bombers. "The fur was flying everywhere," he recalled. "Suddenly I was `bullet stitched' right across the cockpit." Since Tangmere was under attack he turned away and found a likely field for a crash landing at Pulborough, Sussex, where his Hurricane turned violently upside down." he spent some time in hospital.
In November 1941 he was posted to Burma with No.135 Sqn when war broke out in the Far East. No 135 was diverted to Rangoon in Burma , , On February 27 1942, Carey was promoted wing commander to lead No 267 Wing, though it could seldom muster more than six serviceable Hurricanes. After destroying several Japanese aircraft he was forced to move to Magwe. As Japanese air raids increased Carey turned the Red Road, the main thoroughfare across the city, into a fighter runway. "One advantage," he recalled, "was that it was quite possible to sit in Firpo's, the city's fashionable restaurant, and take off within three to four minutes. I managed it on several occasions." Early in 1943, Carey formed an air fighting training unit at Orissa, south-west of Calcutta, for pilots who were unfamiliar with conditions and Japanese tactics. In November 1944 he was posted to command No 73 OTU at Fayid, Egypt, in the rank of group captain. Awarded the AFC, Carey returned to Britian as the war ended in 1945, where he was granted a permanent commission and went to teach tactics at the Central Fighter Establishment at Tangmere. After attending the Army Staff College he reverted to the rank of wing commander to lead No 135 Wing, 2nd Tactical Air Force in Germany, where he flew Tempests. Converting to jets, he moved to Gutersloh as wing commander, A succession of staff appointments followed until 1958 he was appointed air adviser to the British High Commission in Australia. Carey, who was awarded the US Silver Star and appointed CBE in 1960, retired from the Royal Air Force in 1962 and joined Rolls-Royce as its aero division representative in Australia, New Zealand and Fiji, retiring in 1972 and moving back the the UK. . Frank Carey died 6th December 2004.
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Frank Carey with the original painting - Fighter General - by Graeme Lothian. |
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 | Wing Commander Geoffrey Page DSO OBE DFC (deceased)
Whilst as a pilot officer with 56 squadron he took part in the Battles of France and Britain, but on the 12th August 1940 he bailed out of his Hurricane in to the sea. Suffering severe burns he spent the next two years in Hospital undergoing numerous plastic surgery operations. Late 1942 he re-joined operations again as a Flight Lieutenant. July 1943 he won his first DFC and in April 1944 he shot down a Bf110 night fighter. The pilot being the famous Major Hans-Joachim Jabs, who survived. Later promoted Wing Leader of 125 wing, after another DFC he won the DSO at the end of 1944. After the war on a tour of the States met his wife to be, the daughter of a British Hollywood actor. He left the R.A.F. in 1948 joining Vickers Armstrong. He died 3rd August 2000.
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Geoffrey Page signing prints of - Combat Over Normandy - by Graeme Lothian. |
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 | Air Commodore Peter Brothers CBE, DSO, DFC* (deceased)
Learnt to fly at the age of 16 and joined the RAF two years later in 1936. He first saw action in 1940 when as a Flight Commander in 32 Squadron, based at Biggin Hill, he flew his Hurricane against the fighters and bombers of the Luftwaffe. He recalls this as an intensely busy period, during which he shot down an Me109 - his first enemy aircraft; by the end of August that same year his tally of enemy aircraft shot down increased to eight. Awarded the DFC, he was transferred to 257 Squadron where he joined Bob-Stanford Tuck as a Flight Commander. Promoted in 1941 to Squadron Leader, Pete Brothers then took command of 457 Squadron RAAF, equipped with Spitfires. A year later when 457 Squadron returned to Australia, Pete took command of 602 Squadron. In the early autumn of 1942 he went on to become Wing Leader of the Tangmere Wing, succeeding his old friend, Douglas Bader. By the end of the war Pete Brothers had amassed 875 operational hours over a 44-month period. He was credited with having personally shot down 16 enemy aircraft and damaged many more. He later went on to command 57 Squadron during the Malaya campaign. Upon return to the UK Pete Brothers joined the V-Force, flying Valiant-4 jet bombers. He retired in 1973. Sadly, Pete Brothers died 18th December 2008.
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Peter Brothers signing the print - Combat Over Normandy - by Graeme Lothian |
Peter Brothers signing the print - Fighting Lady - by Graeme Lothian |
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 | Group Captain Peter Townsend CVO, DSO, DFC (deceased)
Peter Townsend was one of the most inspirational fighter leaders of the Battle of Britain. In February 1940, flying a Hurricane, he had shot down the first German aircraft to fall on English soil in World War II, and this was the first of a string of successes for the popular commander of 85 Squadron. Shot down twice, wounded, and flying part of the Battle when he couldn't walk, Peter Townsend survived to lead the first night-fighter squadron. He later became Equerry to King George VI, a post he held for 8 years. He died 19th June 1995.
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