Read A Very Unusual Air War Online
Authors: Gill Griffin
A Very Unusual Air War
Dedicated to
the memory of F/Lt H.L. ‘Len’ Thorne, A.E. and all of the brave men of Fighter Command who took part in the Second World War and subsequent conflicts.
Photographs from Len Thorne’s personal collection.
Edited and made ready for publication by the author’s daughter and son-in-law, Gill and Barry Griffin.
Any errors are purely ours or Len’s.
2 41 Squadron, Home Base Catterick
4 RAF Duxford AFDU (Air Fighting Development Unit)
5 Development Flight AFDU – RAF Duxford
6 Development Flight AFDU – RAF Wittering
2 Aerodromes at Which I Landed or From Which I Operated
4 Some Recollections of Those I Have Known
Len and Estelle Thorne on their wedding day, 16th September 1941.
Len with Mustang 3 (P51b), 1944.
Len in September 1990, dressed for a church parade in Stratford-upon-Avon.
Len and Estelle Thorne on their wedding day, 16th September 1941
Len with Mustang 3 (P51b), 1944
Len in September 1990, dressed for a church parade in Stratford-upon-Avon
Logbook page beginning 15 October 1941
Group photograph of RAF cadets of 3 ITW on Babbacombe beach. Late May 1940
Pilots under training outside Norfolk Hotel, Torquay, 1941
Sgt Sanderson inspecting the cannon shell damage to his wing
Johnny Niven, Jimmy Garden, Sgt Smith and Len Thorne
Logbook extract, 1–3 October 1941
Len Thorne giving instruction in aero engines to Southwark ATC, February 1942
Len Thorne lecturing on combat manoeuvres to Southwark ATC, February 1942
F/Lt Roy ‘Lulu’ Lane, F/Lt Turley-George and F/Lt Desmond O’Connor
Sgt Paul Green, Sgt Sanderson and S/Ldr Brendan ‘Paddy’ Finucane
Logbook extract, early May 1942
Officer Commissioning certificate
AFDU ground crew with Spitfire Mk II P7292
Tadeusz ‘Teddy’ Kulczyk and Len Thorne with Mustang Mk I
Inter-unit Christmas card to Len from his brother Leslie
Air-to-air filming. Spitfire VI
Logbook extract, Summary of Flying and assessment June 1942–December 1942
Len Thorne with Mustang P51b in 1943, Duxford
Certificate for a ‘Mention in a Despatch’, June 1944
AFDU Group in front of Tempest Mk 1
Len Thorne, ‘Wimpy’ Wade, ‘Susie’ Sewell and Cpl Green on a cold winter’s day, 1944
Len Thorne with crunched ME109G at Wittering, 22nd November 1944
Certificate for a Mention in a Despatch, January 1946
Visit to Hullavington in 1991 with John Timmis and Ron Rayner
Len sitting in ME109G at Duxford air show, 1996
Swapping memories with Stuart Waring and Andy Sephton at Old Warden
Len with Connie Edwards and Spitfire MH415 in Texas, 2000
Below is a photograph of a page in Len Thorne’s logbook dated October 1941. The left-hand side has been copied almost exactly in the following pages of this book but the right-hand leaf has had to be condensed so that both can be displayed on one sheet. There are columns for Single-Engine and Multi-Engine aircraft, sub-divided into Day and Night Flying. This is further divided into Dual or Pilot in single-engine aircraft and Dual, 1st or 2nd Pilot in multi-engine aeroplanes. There are also columns for Passenger, Instrument or Cloud flying. These have all been condensed to three columns, Dual, Pilot or Passenger. The detailed notes on the right-hand leaf have been incorporated into the story told in the text.
The summary boxes occur at the end of each month. They give details of the hours flown on each type of aeroplane and are signed by the pilot, the officer in command of a ‘Flight’ and the squadron leader. In this case the O/C ‘A’ Flight was F/Lt Norman C. Macqueen, DFC. Six months after this, on 4th May 1942, he was killed when his aircraft was hit by tracer fire from an ME109, while he was flying with 249 Squadron over Malta. The 602 squadron leader who signed above was Al Deere. Some of the figures in the flying columns were written in red. This denoted night flying.
This book was first conceived almost accidentally. Len Thorne was a Second World War fighter pilot. He still had his wartime logbook and it was one of his proudest possessions. It was originally to have gone to his younger daughter, who lives in Texas. When he was in his 85th year he decided that he did not wish it to leave England and so it was willed to the Imperial War Museum at Duxford. Because he could not keep his promise to give the logbook to his daughter, he felt guilty. This led him to make a handwritten copy of the book to give to her. When it was completed and handed over, he thought he should also give a copy to his elder daughter. She persuaded him that his reminiscences should be formalised so that we did not lose this first-hand history. Len found that the exercise of writing out his logbook had brought back many memories, so he created another manuscript copy, this time annotated with all his memories of the events which took place during his wartime RAF career and many of the people he had known. This book is the result.
It shows him to be one of the unsung heroes of the Second World War. He completed two tours of front line duty as a fighter pilot, when their life-expectancy was between two and four weeks. He then went to AFDU, the Air Fighting Development Unit, where he spent the rest of the war combat-testing new British, American and captured enemy aeroplanes.
Yet he was never decorated. He had been recommended for a medal and the citation had been written up but a change of commanding officer sent his medal elsewhere. I would not say he was bitter about it but the fact that he had no decoration did leave a scar. He was twice ‘mentioned in dispatches’, once for flight testing various Allied planes but mostly for flying comparative combat trials and demonstrations in the Focke Wulf 190A-3. His second mention was for flight testing, under operational conditions, the Spitfire Mk XXI in comparative trials against RAF, FAA and USAAF fighters to evaluate its suitability for service use and to prepare and submit a detailed report.