CAM Hurricane photogallery

THE BATTLE OF CONVOY PQ 16

Willie McKnight - Canada's first ace

William Lidstone McKnight was born in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada on 18 November 1918 and grew up in Calgary. The son of a buyer for a grocery company and of a mother who died circa in the 1920s, Willie was a boy with a rebellious personality. After his high school dipoloma he entered the medical school at the University of Alberta but due to his cockiness was almost expelled from the faculty. In February 1939 an RAF recrutiting commission toured Canadian universities; seeking for adventure and trying to leave behind a turbulent love story with a girl named Marian, he enlisted as fighter pilot. He started his flight training in England at No. 6 Flying Training School (FTS), Little Rissington,, Bourton-on-the-Water, Cheltenham

Once again his ebullient personality caused him many problems: he was confined to his barracks at least twice, and he and a classmate (unknown name), were put on open arrest for "being perpetrators of a riot".

When the war broke out in September 1939, fighter cadets were hurriedly qualified as fighter pilot, even if many of them still lacked adequate experience. McKnight was posted to No. 242 Squadron, a unit with many Canadians in its ranks. The squadron didn't see action during the Phoney War, and spent almost five crucial months training for combat operations. The squadron was declared operational on 24 March, 1940.
On 14 May 1940, McKnight began operations over France. Six pilots were initially sent to France to act as reinforcements for No. 605 and 615 Sqns during the final days of the Blitzkrieg; the rapidly advancing panzer divisions forced the unit to change three airfields in six days. On 19 May, McKnight scored his first kill over Cambrai, when his flight of four Hurricanes was attacked by a superior force of Bf 109s. Flying as "tail-end Charlie", he skillfully went into a steep climbing turn which brought him on the tail of one of the diving Germans, thus scoring the squadron's first victory over France.
On May 21, the No. 242 Squadron was pulled back from the frontline and its pilot were given a seven days leave which was cancelled two days later when the British Expeditionary Force was forced to retreat around Dunkirk.
The situation was extremely dangerous, so much that the squadron was forced to operate from French airfields during daylight and to retreat at RAF Manston during nights. Willie McKnight flew during the fierce battles over Dunkirk's shores,  becoming an ace in 48 hours between 31 May and June, when No.242 claimed 13 enemy aircrafts. McKnight was credited with two Bf 110s and a Bf 109 on the 31st, and two Ju 87s the following day.
By 7 June, when the unit covered the evacuation of BEF troops from Biscay ports, McKnight had reached 10 kills, becoming the unit's top scores, followed by his friend-rival Stan Turner, 7 kills.
In the few weeks of the Battle of France he lost twenty-seven pounds and suffered from sleep deprivations and stomach problems. Despite his sickness he found time to have a brief affair with a young French girl who was on the run from the now threatened Paris:

This girl and I, took a flat in Nantes and had a hell of a time for about two weeks. . . I tried to smuggle the girl back on one of our bombing planes but one of the few big noises left in France caught me and raised a merry hell. It was too bed because she was certainly one first class femme - she had been to university and was a modiste until the Hun started toward Paris when she had to evacuate and then I ran into her. (Ralph, Wayne. Aces, Warriors and Wingmen: The Firsthand Accounts of Canada's Fighter Pilots in the Second World War)

After the fightings, McKnight was admitted to hospital in July 1940 for a rest.

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Having lost 11 pilots over France, No. 242 Sqn needed to be reassembled and was thus given a new commader, the famous legless Douglas Bader. he quickly whipped the unit back into shape and selected new flight commanders. He quickly noticed McKnihgt skills and selected him as his wingman. In his post-war biograhpy "Reach for the Sky", Bader recalled that McKnight was tipically Canadian: fearless and aggressive. He also recalled had a taste for romantic music, and used to play and replay his collection of Bing Crosby records at the officers' mess.
No. 242 Sqn was assigned to No. 12 Group. In the early phases of the Battle of Britain, the area of the Midlands, which the air group was tasked to protect, received few attacks, but at the end of August the squadron moved to RAF Duxford and was soon involved in action, when on the 30th intercepted He 111s escorted by Bf 109s and 110s. Sqn Ldr Bader scored two kills and his wingman McKnight claimed two Bf 110s and one He 111.
McKnight scored again on 9 September when Bader coordinated three squadrons into a single unit putting into practices his concept of "Big Wing". Despite claiming two kills on that day McKnight's Hurricane was badly damaged and he made it back to base with one aileron shot away. Another two kills came on 18 September, and on 5 November the Canadian scored his last kill hitting a Bf 109 and forcing the pilot (Fw Scheidt, JG 26) to bail out.
During the fightings of the Battle of Britain, McKnight's merits were recognized with a Distinguished Flying Cross on 30 August, and a Bar added in September.
By the end of 1940, P/O McKnight had claimed 17 kills, plus 2 shared and three unconfirmed. To give details of these kills is difficult, as sources are contradicting: a possible list of kills is the following. Please note that it is a personal reconstruction created using different bibliographical sources.

• 19 May, 1940: Bf 109
• 28 May, 1940: Bf 109
• 29 May, 1940: Bf 109 (plus 1 unconfirmed)
• 29 May, 1940: Do 17
• 31 May, 1940: Bf 110
• 31 May, 1940: Bf 110
• 31 May, 1940: Bf 109
• 1 June,   1940: Ju-87
• 1 June,   1940: Ju-87 (plus 2 unconfirmed)
• 30 Aug,  1940: Bf 110
• 30 Aug,  1940: Bf 110
• 30 Aug,  1940: He 111
• 9 Sept,   1940: unidentified 
• 9 Sept,   1940: unidentified
• 18 Sept, 1940: Do 17, plus a shared Ju 88
• 5 Nov,   1940: Bf 109

By the beginning of 1941, the RAF chose to carry out offensive operations across the Channel, initiating a series of missions nicknamed Circuses and Rhubarbs. Circuses were flown by small bomber formations with strong fighter escort, while the latter were undertaken by pairs of fighters. The damage inflicted to the enemy was modest, and even worse a heavy price was paid for these useless missions when many skilled and experienced pilots were lost for no results.

The first Circus was flown on 12 January, 1941 by No. 242 Sqn, led by McKnight's friend,  Flt Lt Stan Turner. Two days later it was Willie's turn, when together with Turner himself and Sqn Ldr Bader the unit flew its first Rhubarb mission.The Hurricanes headed for France at low altitudes a ran into German E-boats, attacking them. McKnight was flying in P2961/LE-A with wingman Marvin Brown: the pair was fired by accurate anti-aircraft fire. Brown made it back to base, while McKnight went missing. The circumstances of his death are still uncertain today, neither his plane or his body hves never been found.

Some recent sources claim that McKnight might have been shot down by Fw. Helmut Brugelmann of 8./JG 26, but the majority of scholars seems to agree that the Canadian ace was downed by Flak. He died at the age of 22.

Flying Officer Willie McKnight has no known grave; his name is inscribed on the Runnymede War Memorial, Englefield Green, Egham, Surrey, Uk.

Calgary's McKnight Boulevar, near the airport, is named after him.

Today, McKnight is famous through modellers and SIM players for his personal nose art, representing a human skeleton image which held a sickle in its hands, painted on both sides of his cockpit.

References

Halliday, Hugh. The Tumbling Sky. Stittsville, Ontario: Canada's Wings, 1978
Holmes, Tony. Hurricane Aces 1939 - 1940. London: Osprey Publishing. 1998
Ralph, Wayne. Aces, Warriors and Wingmen: The Firsthand Accounts of Canada's Fighter Pilots in the Second World War. Toronto: Wiley, 2005.

Hurricane tank buster in the desert, with 40mm guns.

When the Hawker Hurricane was not suitable anymore for the fighter role, it was diverted to ground-attack operations and thus became the Hurribomber. Two 40mm Vickers S guns were fitted under each wing; based on the naval 2 pdr Pom-Pom, the S gun was a long-recoil weapon, initially designed as a defensive gun for the Vickers Wellington. It was soon realized that guns was the ideal weapon for anti-tank operations. The first unit to operate the specially modified Hurricane IID was No. 6 Sqn. They served in North Africa from mid-1942, achieving considerable success, scoring hits on 147 tanks, 48 of which destroyed, plus almost 200 other vehicles. Although letal, the tank-buster Hurricanes were also extremely vulnerable, since the extraweight rendered them slower and less manouvrable.

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Karel Kuttelwascher - "The Czech night Hawk", PART 2

CLICK HERE FOR PART 1: http://ww2eagles.blogspot.com/2011/04/karel-kuttelwascher-czech-night-hawk.html

On 14 August 1940, Karel Kuttelwascher was enlisted into the RAF as a Sergeant and posted to the Czechoslovak Depot Base at Cosford. The Battle of Britain had already started and the British were desperatly seeking for fighter pilots: Polish and Czech were welcomed and quickly sent to Operational Training Unit (OTU) for coversion onto Hurricanes and Spitfires. Kuttelwascher was sent to Aston Down, converting onto the Hurricane.

On 3 October he was transferred to No.1 Squadron at Northolt. The unit flew in the final stages of the Battle of Britain and in January moved south to Kenley. The Squadron, led by Sqn Ldr Richard Brooker, DFC, was made of British, Canadians, New Zealanders, French, Czechs and even one Lithuanian.

From January 1941, the Fighter Command started a series of offensive operations against the Luftwaffe over occupied France: small numbers of bombers would carry out attacks heavily escorted by RAF fighters. The aim was to draw enemy fighters into combat and destroy them thanks to the escort's numerical superiority. For how good was the theory , Fighter Command's planners soon found out that the same factors which had contributed to the defeat of the attacking Luftwaffe the previous summer, were now against the RAF: in 1940 a German fighter pilot hit over England would have either crash landed or bailed out becoming a POW, while British pilots could come to land over friendly territory and come back to their units shortly thereafter. Now the tactical situation was the opposite, further worsened by the fact the F version of the Bf 109 totally outclassed the Hurricane. 

Despite flying an inferior fighter, Sergeant Kuttelwascher managed to shoow down three BF 109s, on 2 February, 8 April and 21 May respectively.
On 1 July, No.1 Squadron was withdrawn from daylight operations and moved to Tangmere, entrusted with the night defense of the English Southern coast.  During its time as a night interceptor unit, No. 1 Squadron experimentd an anusual tactic, codenamed Turbilite. A twin-engined Douglas Havoc equipped with an AI Mk IV airborne radar and a searchlight on the nose was accompanied by a pair of Hurricanes. The Havoc's task was to guide the fighters to a point where they could sight the enemy and attack him. The tactic was good in theory, as the Hurricanes couldn't be equipped with an airborne radar, but was nevertheless a failure since results were poor and many planes were lost in night collisions.
The squadron stopped Turbinlite operations in late 1941, converting onto the new task of night offensive mission. The new task was aimed at countering enemy bombers directly over their bases. The tactic had been first used by the Luftwaffe: in September 1940 when I./NJG 2 started long-range night intruder operations against Bomber Command  airfields, attacking the bombers en route to or from their targets. Now it was the RAF's turn to do the same.
The defence of British territory was then carried out by radar-equipped Beaufighters, but they were considered too precious and sophisticated to be risked over occupied territory: for this reason, Hurricanes squadrons were chosen for the job, with No.1 Squadron destined to became the most successful one. The unit was at the time commanded by Sqn Ldr Maclachlan, who scored eight victories over Malta prior to losing his left forearm on 16 February 1941, hit by a Bf 109's cannon shells.
Night Intruder operations were extremely dangerous; the Hurricanes couldn't accomodate an airborne radar,  therefore the pilots had to rely on dead reckoning to find enemy airfields; they had to read the map in the cockpit and fly low over enemy land, paying attention to ground obstacles, flak, and night fighters. When pilots managed to reach their assigned targets, there was also a good chance of not seeing anything, since many German bombers used to came back to a different airfield from which they had taken off.
For this missions, No.1 Squadron flew Hurricanes Mk.IIC equipped with two 200-litres auxiliary tanks, which gave the fighters a flying time of nearly 3 and a half hours. Missions were long and very  risky, and put the squadron's pilots under very stressful conditions.

Kuttelwascher used to fly black-painted Hurricane IIC BE581/JX-E. The Czech opened his account on 1 April 1942 over Melun airfield, when he caught a taking off Ju 88: Kuttelwascher closed to 100 yards and set on fire the starboard engine. The bomber dived into the ground, and the Czech finished the job strafing a second Ju 88 on the runway before heading home with the squadron's first night kill.
It was the first of the 22 victories scored by No.1 Squadron's pilots in 180 missions, plus 67 train cars, 5 boats a one vehicle. Of the 22 air victories, 15 had been scored by Kuttelwascher.
Kuttelwascher scored his second kill two weeks later, on the 17th,over St. André downing a Do 217. OnN the night of 26-27 April Kuttelwascher downed another Dornier Do-217, but was then attacked by a Ju 88 night fighter, which almost hit him in the cockpit. He took evasive evaction and managed to damage the enemy fighter before losing it in the darkness.
On the night 30 April/1 May Kuttelwascher shoot down two other bombers, a Do-217 over Rennes and a He-111 near the Dinard Canal.
It was on the night of 3/4 May that Kuttelwascher had his most succesfull missions, when he spotted six He 111s in the Everaux/St. André aerea. He attacked the formation shooting down three of the Heinkels. Meanwhile, over Dinard, Sqn Ldr Maclachlan downed a Do 217 and another He 111 flying BD983/JZ-G. The two pilots returned home with five bombers killed in one mission.
The Czech's happy time continued as he destroyed a Do 217 on 3 June and another Dornier plus one He 111 on the following night. On 22 June Kuttelwascher shot down a Ju 88. His last kills came on 29 June and 2 July, both Do 217s.
On 9 July 1942 the Squadron withdrew to re-equip with Hawker Typhoons. Kuttelwascher wished to continue night operations, therefore was transferred at his own request to No. 23 Squadron in Sussex: the unit was equipped with Bostons, but less than a month later converted onto the Mosquito NF Mk. II. No. 23 Squadron Mosquitos were not equipped with the standard AI MK. IV radar, since it was considered to hazardous to send radar-equipped fighters over occupied Europe; the loss of an aircrat would have given the Germans the chance to examinate British electronic devices. Kuttelwascher was the first foreigner to fly the Mossie.

Kuttelwascher, 2nd from left, with American pilots.

The Czech ace partnered with P/O G. E. Palmer and flew six intruder missions over France and the Netherlands in August and September, but he didn't meet a single enemy aircraft. In early October 1942, Kuttelwascher was pulled out from frontline duties and posted to the Czechoslovak Airforce Inspectorate in London. He was subsequently sent to the US for a propaganda tour in June 1943,  selling war bonds, giving lectures in american flying schools and working with the americans to master the art of night fighting. He became popular and spoke twelve times on CBS radio, and 42 on the BBC. From October he left the US and continued his tour in Canada.
During this months Kuttelwascher had the chance to fly many american fighters such as the P-40, the P-51 and the P-38. He came back to England in early 1944 being posted to 32 Mantenance Unit as a test pilot. He spent the last two years of the war flying Hurricanes, Spitfires, Beaufightes, Wellingtons, B-25s and even four-engined bombers such as Halifaxes and Lancasters.
In August 1945, Kuttelwascher returned to his native country welcomed as a national hero. However, the Czechoslovak state had fallen from one invader to another, since the country was now ruled by the Soviets. Many Czech pilots who fought with the RAF were imprisoned and persecuted. Kuttelwascher was lucky enough to avoid prison until May 21 1946, when he left his country for England once again.
He had already married a British woman and got British citizenship, working for British European Airways as a first officer, and then captain.
On August 18, 1959, Karel Kuttelwascher died of heart attack while on holiday in Cornwall, at the age of 43. He was buried in Uxbridge.

During his career, Kuttelwascher received:
Czech Military Cross, five times
Czech Medal for Bravery, 4 times
Croix de Guerre with Palm and Silver Star
Distinguished Flying Cross and Bar
Battle of Britain Clasps
Defence Medal
War Medal

In 2005, the Royal Air Force's Battle of Britain Memorial Flight, based at Coningsby in Lincolnshire, England, painted its Hawker Hurricane IIC PZ865 in the colour scheme of BE581 'Night Reaper'. The scheme includes 11 swastika kill markings under the cockpit sill on the port side (as seen in a contemporary newspaper photograph) as BE581 might have appeared the morning after 'Kut's' triple kill on 5 May 1942. 

1916 - 1959

References
Hurricane Aces 1941-1945, Andrew Thomas. Osprey Publishing, 2003.
Night Hawk, Roger Darlington. William Kimber, 1985