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Introduction

by Allan Hunter

In the grey pre-dawn light of 25 July 1941 six Bristol Beaufort Is of 217 Squadron warmed up on the airfield at RAF St. Eval in Cornwall. At 5:30 am, weighed down with bulky landmines that stuck out beyond their bomb doors, they rumbled down the runway one by one and clambered into the sky. The crews scanned the horizon with some anxiety. It promised to be a clear day and they needed cloud cover for what they had ahead of them. They were due to rendezvous with torpedo-carrying Beauforts from 22 Squadron - their orders to find and attack the battleship Scharnhorst, surely one of the most dangerous ships on the sea at that time. She was a foe they had faced before. Two nights earlier 217 Squadron Beauforts had bombed her at La Pallice. Now the Scharnhorst, escorted by six destroyers, was somewhere in the Bay of Biscay, making a dash for the safety of Brest harbour with its guns and its repair facilities.

The weather quickly worsened, providing the much-wished-for cover from enemy aircraft, but in the cloud and patchy mist the force became separated and only one of the Beauforts was able to find the target. Spotting a large wake in the sea below, them they flew along it, hoping to catch their quarry unawares. In fact the cloud was so thick that it wasn't until they were directly above it that the Beaufort crew saw the huge vessel. There was no time to drop the mine. They had to go round again. It was whilst attempting a second run that the lone Beaufort ran out of cloud cover and immediately encountered a storm of flak. Within seconds the aircraft was hit several times. Moments later it struck the waves as it crash-landed, broke up and began to sink. Sergeant 'Pip' Appleby, the W/Op (Wireless Operator), was killed and the pilot, Squadron Leader Les Collings, was wounded. My father, Pilot Officer Jim Hunter, who was the navigator, and the A/G (Air Gunner), Sergeant Ted Taylor, both suffered minor injuries.

The survivors were picked up by a German ship, and so began their nearly four years in Kriegsgefangenschaft, as prisoners of war, or 'kriegies' as they became known.

The small Rowney watercolour book in which Jim recorded his pictures of PoW life, and which are reproduced here, sat on various shelves for over 40 years before he thought of doing anything with it. It travelled with him from prison camp to prison camp, across Germany on the forced marches away from the Russian front, then from one posting to the next throughout his career in the peacetime RAF, and when he retired at age 55 it was installed in his study. There it sat next to his Flying Log Book. Into this he had carefully pasted three small slips of paper. They were the meticulously recorded details of being shot down. He had kept these pages safe from prying German eyes throughout his captivity, just in case he ever had to explain to an RAF Board of Enquiry what had happened to the aircraft. At the top of the page he wrote, "Total time on last 'Op' 3yrs. 09 mths. 15 days 07 hrs. 27 m."

About ten years ago, in response to enquiries from the family, he began to write down his wartime experiences. To these he added many photographs taken at the time, as well as press cuttings and other pieces of memorabilia, and his PoW paintings.

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