Ginger Lacey: Fighter Pilot

by Richard Townsend Bickers

  Air Ministry had no flying jobs to offer which would allow an acting squadron leader to retain his rank. But there was a post going in the Air Ministry itself, and Acting Squadron Leader Lacey joined the Directorate of Accident Prevention. Six months later, when this was made a Deputy Directorate, with the consequent reduction in establishment, he was the first to ask for a posting (‘I’d have gone as a sergeant pilot, let alone as a flight lieutenant’). Being immured in a London office was not what had attracted him to the air force.

  Even as late as March 1947 a few privileges still came the way of ex-squadron commanders with twenty-seven confirmed victories over enemy aircraft to their credit. He was allowed to choose his posting and elected to join No. 72 Squadron at Odiham, Hampshire, which was commanded by Squadron Leader ‘Buck’ Courtney, who had been a Wing Commander Flying in Burma.

  On 72, which was equipped with Vampires, he flew jets for the first time; and found it much simpler than flying a Hurricane or Spitfire.

  He soon forgot the boredom of office life in the return to the camaraderie of a squadron and the pleasure of formation flying, aerobatics and practise interceptions: the latter under the close control of Ground Controlled Interception stations, which he would have welcomed in 1940-41.

  On 29th May he was granted an Extended Service Commission., but in the Aircraft Control Branch, as a Fighter Controller. He immediately applied to remain in the General Duties (flying) Branch and was allowed to stay with the squadron. He was still there in March 1948, when he was posted to begin his duties as a Fighter Controller.

  There followed periods at the School of Fighter Control and on a G.C.I. station, which ended on 8th December 1948 when he was granted a Permanent Commission in the G.D. Branch.

  In February 1949 he went on a conversion course to Meteors and thence to No. 43 Squadron at Tangmere, as a Flight Commander.

  August 1949 saw him on his way to Hong Kong as an acting squadron leader to do a tour in Fighter Control. And there he added, through no conscious effort, to the many stories already told around his name.

  One of these will serve as an exemplar.

  Squadron Leader Lacey, commanding a G.C.I. station in the New Territories, was due to visit Kai Tak, the main airfield and Administrative H.Q., early one morning. The Adjutant spoke to him in the Mess the previous evening.

  ‘Sir, I’ve just taken on a new cook for the Mess …’

  ‘Thank goodness. It’s about time. I don’t eat as much as you other chaps, but it seems to me the meals have been like parboiled hemp, lately.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Well, this new cook has to be medically examined and security cleared. Would you mind taking him to Kai Tak with you tomorrow, sir?’

  ‘Certainly I’ll take him. Give me a chance to practise my Cantonese. Tell him to be at the camp gate at 8 a.m. sharp, mind you.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Sharp.’

  Came 8 a.m. and the Unit Commander drove out of the camp gate in his jeep. A Chinese, clad in the white vest and khaki shorts that make his kind indistinguishable from one another, was standing by the gate, grinning.

  ‘Don’t stand there grinning, you slab-sided, misbegotten offspring of a bolweevil,’ said Lacey, practising his Cantonese.

  The Chinese continued to grin, but made no move.

  ‘Get in, blast you.’ This time he beckoned.

  The Cantonese, still smiling, even laughing slightly, came forward willingly. After a century of British occupation, the Hong Kongese have given up wondering about the strange, inexplicable impulses of the red devils. He climbed into the seat next to Lacey and sat holding tightly to the windscreen frame while the Jeep raced and bounded over the ten or fifteen miles to Kai Tak.

  Lacey ushered him into Sick Quarters. ‘Here you are, Doc: our new Officers’ Mess cook. Give him the once-over, will you please.’

  The Chinese, delighted and flattered by all the attention he was receiving, submitted willingly to the rather intimate tests to which he was subjected and the inoculations and vaccination which were pumped into his arm. His new employer left a message at the Civilian Labour Office in Station Headquarters to say that he was returning to his unit and cookie must make his own way: there was a good bus service.

  As he drove into the gates of his G.C.I. he noticed that there was another Chinese standing there, with apparent aimlessness; odd, how these chaps seemed to have all day to hang around …

  The Adjutant met him with a reproving expression.

  ‘Sir, you forgot to take the new cook into Kai Tak.’

  ‘No, I didn’t. He was having his medical, last time I saw him; he must have cleared the Labour Office by now. He’ll be here in time to cook dinner.’

  ‘But, sir, you were five minutes early. When he turned up, you’d gone.’

  ‘But there was a man waiting at the gate, so I took him along.’

  ‘Sir, that was the chap who’d come to dig the new latrines for the airmen …’

  The joy of it was that, once the wheels had been put in motion to employ Wun Fat Tit as a cook, it took three months to reverse them and get him ejected.

  But Squadron Leader Lacey was there to do a job and he did it well. On 8th November 1951 the Air Officer Commanding Hong Kong, Air Commodore D. W. F. Bonham-Carter, C.B., D.F.C. wrote to him:

  Dear Lacey,

  The Hong Kong Auxiliary Air Force has communicated to my Headquarters a message of gratitude for the exemplary co-operation they received from your Unit in the training of their radar operators during the Annual Camp.

  Whilst the message refers to all personnel of No. 43 S.U., it cites, in particular, Flight Lieutenant Grocott, Sergeant Locks and Corporal Harris.

  I am aware of the long struggle which the formation and training of the F.C.U. has involved, and it is most gratifying to me to receive confirmation of your Unit’s efforts in this task.

  Will you please convey this message to all operations personnel under your command.

  Yours sincerely,

  Two and a half years later, Lacey returned to England and was posted, as a flight lieutenant, to be a ground instructor at the Initial Training School, Jurby, Isle of Man. Thence the school moved to Kirton Lindsey, Lincolnshire. He did not enjoy the job, despite the compensation it offered of a great deal of gliding.

  Badly out of flying practice, he applied to go on the Pilot Attack Instructors’ Course at the Fighter Weapons School, Leconfield, Yorkshire. The C.O., an old friend of his, told him that he would like to keep him on as an instructor if he did well enough on the course.

  The P.A.I. course is a difficult one at any time. To a man of thirty-six who has not held a full-time flying appointment for four years, it must have been a formidable strain. But he stayed on, at the end of the three months, to be a Flight Commander and Instructor.

  He instructed at the Fighter Weapons School until March 1957, when he was sent to Germany to serve as a Fighter Controller once more. Typically, he formed a close friendship with Major Eric Hohagen, a Luftwaffe pilot whom he describes as someone who ‘must have been an absolute joy to Hitler. Over six feet tall, fair and handsome; even though he had several accidents during the war, which have left marks on his face.’ What Lacey admires most about Hohagen is that he served throughout the war in the yellow-nosed ‘Goering Squadron’ based at Abbeville; the toughest of all German fighter units. And that he never claims that any of his eighty confirmed victories were gained on the Russian front, but admits with pride that they were won against the British and the Americans. Major Hohagen, who was taken from hospital with his injuries only part-healed to fly the Me. 263 jet fighter in 1944, now flies Sabrejets for the Luftwaffe.

  The tour in Germany did more for Lacey’s command of foreign languages than his 2½ years in Hong Kong had done. ‘I acquired a certain amount of pub, restaurant and garage German. I could order a meal or a drink and get what I wanted, and tell the garage exactly what was wrong with the car. Of course my conversational German wasn’t so good—unless it happened to be about
drink, food or cars.’

  Back to England, in September 1959, and a posting to a G.C.I. once more, on fighter control duties; but this time, by choice, in his native Yorkshire where he has bought a house and, with his wife Sheila and three daughters Diana fourteen, Wendy eleven and Susie who was born in June 1960, lives happily among his friends, who are mainly fishermen.

  Flamborough, he describes as ‘A wonderful little place. It’s well over a year now since I’ve had to buy any fish: in this village the fishermen push a fish in at your door as they pass in the early morning on their way home from sea. They’d never think of letting you know who dropped the fish in.’

  And that is the story of Ginger Lacey. The pilot who learned to fly on Tiger Moths and progressed to Hunters, but who now has the opportunity only to fly Chipmunks and no longer bothers to enter his flying hours in his log-book. ‘It doesn’t seem worthwhile. There seems to be no purpose to flying when there are no longer any aircraft to shoot at or trains and tanks to fire on with your rockets.’

  Tempus edax rerum.

  Epilogue

  The last entry in Squadron Leader J.H. Lacey’s RAF logbook is dated 20th November 1956: ‘Meteor IV No WK763K, busted compass’. He was airborne for 55 minutes, which made his total Service flying time 2609 hours and 5 minutes, ranging from Tiger Moths to Hunters.

  Henceforth his duties would be Fighter Control, which meant directing fighters on to their targets — ground controlled interception (GCI) — at a radar station. In December 1962 he was posted to the Far East for a year, where he served on GCIs at Kuching, in Sarawak and Labuan, in North Borneo.

  He retired from the Service on 4th March 1967. A parade was held at RAF Patrington, near Spurn Head, his last station. He took the salute at the march past and a section of Lightnings, the latest fighters, did a fly past.

  In May 1968 shooting of the film The Battle of Britain began. Jim was appointed adviser on the battle scenes and other aspects of squadron life.

  One of the actors, Robert Shaw, criticised the seemingly snobbish differentiation between commissioned and NCO pilots. If sergeants’ lives were as much at risk as their officers’, why were they excluded from the Officers’ Mess?

  Jim interjected, ‘Some of us were glad to be sergeant pilots. It kept us apart from amateur clots. We were serious fliers—the professionals.’

  Shaw retorted, ‘In that case, why did you become an officer?’

  Jim’s deadpan reply gave the reason quoted in Chapter Eight: he would have to be discharged from the Service and re-admitted. Other ranks got a bounty of £20 when discharged. One wonders if Shaw realised that his leg was being pulled.

  A party of Japanese journalists who visited the filming amused Jim rather more when they asked him how many aircraft he had shot down.

  ‘Twenty-eight.’

  ‘Ah, so. Twenty-eight German aeroplanes.’

  ‘No: twenty-seven German aeroplanes and one Japanese.’

  The Nips went into a huddle, from which presently their spokesman withdrew to bow and announce, ‘We forgive you.’

  There was no polite reply to that.

  Silence was also the only resort for Lieutenant-General Adolph Galland when he encountered a typically subtle Ginger Lacey put-down. A fighter pilot with 104 victories that included 31 Hurricanes and 47 Spitfires, Galland was Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe fighter force from November 1940 to January 1945. He and Jim were both renowned for their expert marksmanship. Meeting the leading Battle of Britain ace for the first time, Herr Generalleutnant ventured genially, ‘You and I must have shot at each other.’

  ‘We wouldn’t both be standing here now if we had,’ Jim retorted without ambiguity.

  On 3rd March 1973 he became Chief Flying Instructor at Grindale Sports Parachute Centre, which was also a flying club, near Bridlington in the East Riding of Yorkshire.

  First, he had to renew his private pilot’s licence, which he did at Humberside Airport, Hull. Asked how he maintained his fitness for flying, his characteristic answer was, ‘I’m teaching my doctor to fly. If I don’t pass, nor will he.’

  One afternoon he drove to Elstree to fetch a Cherokee 6 for the club. The journey took longer than expected. More time was lost while someone hunted for the aircraft’s keys. He had not flown the type before, but was given a good briefing, which further delayed his departure. Doing a thorough pre-flight check, he tried to start the engine and found that the battery was nearly flat. Obtaining a replacement lost more time. By now he was worried about daylight at the other end as there were no night flying facilities at Bridlington. The fuel tanks were not full, but he had more than enough for the trip.

  Describing the flight, he wrote: ‘Airborne at last, I had time to appreciate the electronic “goodies” with which the beast was lavishly equipped; two of everything, so I put them all to work.’ Making his first radio contact to check his position, he had to turn the volume control up fully.

  That should have been a clue, but I missed it. Later, when I checked my time and distance covered, I got my first nasty shock — I had a head wind component that was a good 30 knots more than forecast. I recalculated everything. It was definitely going to be dark when I landed and my fuel was going to be tight. Taking back bearings on Daventry, I had the second set tuned to Ottringham and was waiting for it to come into range. Bedford and Wittering did not answer my calls but I was not in the least worried because I was now at my correct quadrangle, Flight Level 5000 ft, and well clear of everyone’s Military Air Traffic Zones.

  The light had almost gone and I flew out of range of Daventry. I should have been able to get either Daventry or Ottringham, if not both. I had also given up trying to raise a friendly voice; no one apparently wanted to know me. I tuned in Volmet [recorded weather information] who would have to talk to me whether he wanted to or not — he didn’t. I really had collected a heap of junk. It was quite dark now. I operated the cockpit lighting switch, but the cockpit remained dark. To hell with all aviation and this Cherokee in particular! I used my lighter to check my fuel gauges and my stomach turned over when I found they were empty. Then it dawned: I had no electricity. Wait, this is too easy an assumption, I could just as easily have plenty of electricity, a heap of unserviceable gear and no fuel. Common sense told me I must have fuel because I could not have used it all in the time available. With no gauges the problem was knowing which of the four tanks it was in. A wrong guess and I could have the non-pleasure of a forced landing at night, a trick I had once performed in 1938 and which I did not want to repeat.

  I switched off everything electrical. Whilst pondering on the fact that I appeared to have very little of anything, my engine faltered. My tank change was instantaneous, but I had lost at least ten years expectation of life. As my heart beats slowly sorted themselves out, I realised I had also lost myself. It did not seem to matter, because I knew the Humber must eventually appear. It did, but it took an awful long time doing so. As I arrived in mid-Humber the engine faltered again and I switched tanks. I knew that was where she would cut and I was sitting waiting for it. I had already got to know this bitch of a Cherokee! That only left me with what remained in my tip tanks, so I changed course for RAF Leconfield. I had not a hope of finding the lights on. As I selected 121.5 [VHF frequency for emergencies] for one last try on the radio, the butane in my lighter burned out. The way my luck was running, this did not surprise me. I broadcast a Mayday saying that I was attempting a landing at Leconfield and had my first stroke of luck — the duty helicopter crew got a break through, very faintly and got airborne. They positioned themselves over the downwind end of the main runway, all lit up like a Christmas tree. The manual flaps worked and I started a rather complicated juggling act, flying with the left hand and alternating between the throttle and sparking my lighter over the air speed indicator with my right hand. You would not believe it, but at about 50 ft over the threshold my lighter flint wore out. I learned a lot about flying from that trip.

  He had been award
ed the Croix de Guerre in May 1940 and was due to go to Paris for an investiture. ‘But,’ as he put it, ‘Hitler had a better idea.’ It was not until 1983 that he and Sheila were invited to Paris for a ceremony on 15th September, Battle of Britain Day, at the Arc de Triomphe, where he duly received the decoration. That evening there was a party at the British Embassy.

  In September 1986 the Laceys went to Canada as guests of the Royal Canadian Air Force, for six weeks that included seven days at the Commonwealth Games. They were asked to return for the 1990 games

  Ginger Lacey’s last pupil was Chris Lodder, who was already a parachutist and parachute instructor. They made their final flight together, which was Jim’s last, on 30th March 1987.

  In February 1989 he began to have discomfort in his throat. Cancer of the gullet was diagnosed and he was to have an immediate operation. He wrote to Don Healey, ‘They’re going to have a go at my throttle. Pretty long odds, but I’m still planning on Vancouver, 1990.’

  When his doctors warned him that he had only three months to live, his method of informing his younger daughter was as dismissive as it had always been about any matter, however grave. He telephoned her to say, ‘I’ve got news for you, some good and some bad. Which d’you want first?’

  She asked for the good news.

  ‘I’ve got two tickets for Twickenham.’

  ‘Oh, good. And what’s the bad news?’

  ‘I won’t be able to come with you.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I won’t be alive then.’

  Squadron Leader James Harry Lacey DFM (and bar) Croix de Guerre died on 20th May 1989, as bravely as he had lived and fought. A Hurricane flew over the Priory Church in Bridlington immediately after his funeral service.

  Glossary of Fighter Code Words

  Angels: Height in thousands of feet.

  Bandit: Enemy aircraft.

  Buster: Maximum cruising speed.

  Gate: Maximum possible speed (permitted for five minutes at a time only, due to severe strain on engine).