Tag Archives: Strange

S/Ldr Louis Strange, DSO, MC, DFC*

Friday, 28 June 1940

North Weald

Squadron Leader E.V. Knowles flies his last operational patrol as CO of No. 56 Squadron, this one over Manston. To his contemporaries he is ‘Teddy’ Knowles, but his young pilots like Geoffrey Page have nicknamed him ‘Führer’.  Knowles has commanded 56 Squadron since September 1939, and is due to be posted.

Ringway

P/O Louis Strange flies to Hendon to visit the Air Ministry, to find out what he is supposed to be doing at Ringway. F/Lt O’Neill has already had a go, and returned to Ringway with no answer.

Monday, 24 June 1940

France

France and Italy sign an armistice. Italy’s crumb from the table of Nazi conquest is the old province of Savoy.

Four small scale raids are mounted against coastal targets between Boulogne and Berck-sur-Mer, with one at Plage du Merlimont, four miles south of Le Touquet.

RAF Ringway

Louis Strange arrives at Ringway. He doesn’t knows why he’s been sent there, and no-one there, not even the Station Commander, can tell him.

Sunday, 23 June 1940

No. 24 Squadron, Hendon

Following the final evacuation from France, No. 24 (Communications) Squadron is reduced to providing internal UK flights for VIPs. Fewer aircrew are needed. Pilot Officer Louis Strange is posted to Ringway.

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.

Monday, 20 May 1940

France

German forces reach the English Channel. The BEF and the cream of the French Army are trapped in north-eastern France and Belgium, unable to join the rest of the French Army further west and south.

24 Squadron

F/Lt Frank Keast flies a D.H.89 Dragon Rapide to the fighter airfield at Merville and returns to Hendon. Though Keast’s logbook does not mention his passengers, or the purpose of the flight, he was probably dropping off P/O Louis Strange, who was to act as an Air Movements Officer to organise the safe evacuation of RAF men and machines back to the UK.

51 Squadron

Flying Officer Albert John Oettle flies as Second Pilot in Whitley V No. 4972, on a 51 Squadron raid to attack German forces at Ribemont. Jack Oettle had joined the RAF in 1937 and this was his eighth operation. His first had been flown from Rheims, dropping leaflets over Germany two nights after war had been declared. More recently, on the night of 3 May, Oettle has had to bale out over England from a 51 Squadron Whitley when it ran low on fuel after a raid on Norway.