Tag Archives: Hockey

W/Cdr Ron Hockey

Tuesday, 21 May 1940

No. 24 Squadron

Pilot Officer Louis Strange, DSO, MC, DFC, an air movements officer with No 24 Squadron, coaxes three unserviceable Hurricanes into flyable condition at Merville airfield. Faced with the imminent arrival of German ground-forces, he finds two pilots who have been shot down, allocates them a Hurricane each, and tells them to make for England. With the Germans not far away, he takes off in the third Hurricane and flies it home, unarmed, pursued by German fighters which he shakes off. He has never flown a Hurricane before. For this he is awarded a second DFC. The first had been earned in 1918.

For more information about Louis Strange, visit his Wikipedia page.

Pilot Officer Ron Hockey flies four unnamed passengers from Hendon to Le Bourget. It is a routine flight until his D.H.95 De Havilland Flamingo is attacked by Ju87 Stukas bombing a target somewhere near Hockey’s route. He logs it as his first operational sortie. He returns to Hendon the same day with 8 passengers plus his crew of four, but doesn’t list the second flight as a separate operation. Up to this point Keast’s and Hockey’s cross-Channel flights have been non-operational.

This particular Flamingo (G-AFUF) had been delivered to Guernsey Airways in May 1939 for its service to Southampton. On the outbreak of war it was impounded and sent to No. 24 Squadron. Flights to the Channel Islands, operated since November 1939 by the umbrella organisation National Air Communications, ceased on 13 June 1940.

Friday, 10 May 1940

German forces cross the borders of Holland and Belgium. French and British forces move over the Belgian border in reaction to the invasion.

Flying Officer Frank Keast, a pilot with No. 24 (Communications) Squadron, flies from Hendon to Le Bourget, then to Amiens in a DH95 Flamingo. He has been with 24 Squadron since the end of February, ferrying senior officers and politicians around the UK, and between England and the British Expeditionary Force in northern France. Highly-experienced, with more than 3,500 hours, Keast is one of many pilots trained by the RAF in the early 1930s then put out to the Reserve. During the later 1930s he had flown with domestic civilian airlines, including Railway Air Services, and he may have had a spell with Sir Alan Cobham’s Flying Circus. After his recall in 1939, Keast had flown Ansons at No. 3 Air Observers’ Navigation School, putting trainee Observers through their paces in practical navigation exercises.

Pilot Officer Ron Hockey has been with 24 Squadron since the beginning of 1940. He flies a brace of generals, two squadron-leaders and a wing-commander to Amiens from Hendon in a DH86b. He takes the two squadron-leaders on to Le Bourget before returning to Hendon with six new passengers. On these flights he is accompanied by a rigger for the elegant four-engined biplane.

Notes:

FJB Keast logbook: copy available in the RAF Museum.
Grp Capt. R.C. Hockey logbook, now in the Imperial War Museum; copy available in the RAF Museum.