Sniper of the Skies: The Story of George Frederick 'Screwball' Beurling, DSO, DFC, DFM

by Nick Thomas

  He went on to explain that it was one of the requirements of entry to the Service to have an official copy of a recruit’s birth certificate. The conversation went round and round in circles, but there was no way past this stumbling-block.

  ‘Too bad, you know, old boy, but I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to go back and get it.’

  With these words echoing around in his head, a disconsolate Beurling walked out of the office. He had to act quickly. If he was to achieve his goal, Beurling had no choice, he’d have to sneak back onboard the Valparaiso before he was missed, recross the Atlantic, and collect his log book and birth certificate, before embarking on the hazardous crossing once again.

  The return voyage proved eventful and the convoy was bombed before they had even left the Clyde. With the Germans monitoring their progress, further attacks followed, and on day three they were targeted by a U-boat, which slightly damaged the Valparaiso’s hull with a ‘glancing blow by a torpedo.’ Rather than head back for repairs, the Captain kept the Valparaiso on course, maintaining her position in the convoy.

  Beurling later recalled:

  ‘Somehow we limped across the Atlantic, up the St Lawrence and into harbour at Montreal, which we reached on August 3rd (1940).’

  Here, Beurling was signed off and collected his pay. Before leaving, he arranged to sign up for the ship’s next crossing, rushing home in the meantime to collect his documentation. Turning up at home unannounced gave his mother a start:

  ‘Why, George Beurling, where on earth have you been?’

  Having explained himself to his parents, both finally agreed that if George was determined to enlist with the RAF, then they would not stand in his way. He spent his shore-leave at home, before heading back to Montreal. Beurling hired a car and made up for lost time by taking his mother for drives around the country. Aware that his fate was uncertain, he took time to visit old friends, saying his ‘goodbyes’.

  Meanwhile, the Valparaiso had undergone repairs in dry-dock before being declared seaworthy and it was on 8 August that Beurling began his third crossing of the Atlantic. The convoy consisted of thirty merchant vessels with a destroyer and Sunderland flying boat escort, which departed mid-Atlantic, but not before the Sunderland had sunk an enemy U-boat in the Western Approaches.

  The convoy was picked up again ‘somewhere west of Ireland’ and safely escorted into the Clyde, arriving in the middle of an air raid.

  Once in dock, Beurling persuaded the Captain into letting him have £15, almost his wage for the single crossing, before jumping ship. According to Beurling’s recollections, this time he was seen by the skipper who called out to a policeman. As luck would have it, this was the self-same bobby he had asked directions from only a few weeks earlier. Beurling quickly explained he was heading to enlist as a pilot and was allowed on his way.

  Sadly, the Swedish motor merchant was sunk by U-38 only a few months later, at 2112 hours on 31 December 1940. The Valparaiso, a straggler from convoy HX-97 since 29 December, was hit aft by a G7a torpedo and sank by the stern, with the loss of all thirty-five of her crew. Beurling would not forget the brave men he had met on the Valparaiso, nor their sacrifice.

  Meanwhile, Beurling had returned to the recruiting office where he was interviewed by the same flight lieutenant, presenting his birth certificate and log book. With the formalities almost dealt with, it only remained for Beurling to be issued with a landing certificate by British immigration officials and he would be on the first rung of the ladder. He was given a rail ticket to London and told to report to the RAF’s main pilot recruiting office, Adastral House. Beurling reached London later that day, 7 September, the day that marked the beginning of the London Blitz.

  Following a medical and an interview in front of a panel of four or five RAF officers, Beurling was finally accepted and signed his enlistment papers as a pilot under training.

  It must have been a tremendous relief for the young Beurling, who had struggled for over a year to enlist. He later joked on the RAF’s Motto “Per Ardua ad Astra”, which he translated as, ‘To the Stars the hard way!’

  Chapter Two

  Training for War

  Beurling was officially recorded as having enlisted in the RAF as an AC2 (Service No. 1267053) on 20 September 1940. By this time the Battle of Britain had already been won, but Fighter Command was becoming desperately short of fully trained pilots. To his surprise, immense frustration and disappointment, the Service didn’t fast-track Beurling through to operational flying. Instead, he and all the other recruits, denoted as ‘pilots under training’, had to undergo the entire flight training process from scratch, albeit on a more intensive course than in the pre-war era.

  Initially posted to the Manning Depot, Uxbridge, Beurling found himself marching up and down on the parade ground, being bellowed at by one NCO or another. When they were not marching, they were polishing. And if they were not polishing, they were doing physical training or attending some non-flying-related lecture or other. Not unnaturally, Beurling rebelled against what he considered to be an utter waste of time, when more than half of Europe was under the Nazi jackboot. When he voiced his frustrations, Beurling found himself confined to barracks, which meant reporting to the guardhouse on the hour, every hour, while not on duty. Further postings took him to No. 9 Recruitment Centre on 27 September, with another temporary posting following on 4 October.

  Beurling and the other recruits were shipped off to RAF Hendon on 2 November 1940, where they endured more of the same, punctuated only by air raids. The closest most of the recruits got to the landing strip was filling in the craters left by the Luftwaffe. Whilst here, Beurling is reported to have flown in a Lysander of No. 1 Camouflage Flight, which was unfortunately involved in a forced landing at Denham.

  The reason for the delay in the trainee pilots entering flying training was simple; there were backlogs throughout the system due to heavy rain and fog, which had meant no flying at many of the RAF’s Initial Training Wings, thus creating a bottleneck in the whole pilot training programme. Until the weather changed, it seemed that Beurling and his fellow airmen would remain in limbo.

  Two months into his service, Beurling was posted to No. 1 Initial Training Wing at Bobbington, Devon. Naturally, he soon demonstrated his aptitude and was allowed to solo after only a few hours on trainers. While he excelled in the air, Beurling feared that he might fail in the classroom and so he was the most attentive of students. He worked hard on his mathematics, on map-reading, meteorology and navigation. He studied the aircraft recognition books and learned how to use an Aldis lamp, mastering the rudiments of sending and receiving messages in Morse code. In order to become a fighter pilot, Beurling needed to understand the workings of his aircraft’s armament and the finer points of air-to-air firing in particular, deflection firing, an area where Beurling already had the upper-hand, having mastered the art previously.

  Beurling was serving at RAF Bobbington during Christmas 1940, awaiting a posting, and, on 28 February 1941, received his first promotion to leading aircraftsman.

  On 8 April 1941, Beurling arrived at No. 5 Elementary Flying Training School (EFTS) at Meir, Staffordshire. The training school was largely equipped with Miles Masters and Magisters, which resembled a two-seater Hurricane and which was used to introduce them to the type:

  ‘The Master is a little honey to fly. Takes off fast and lands fast, but when you actually come down to it, [it’s] just another pair of wings with an engine and a fuselage.’

  It was at Meir that Beurling came under the tutelage of Sergeant Raymond Sellers, a former fighter pilot, who had flown Hawker Hurricanes with No. 111 Squadron at the height of the Battle of Britain. Having studied Beurling’s log book before the pair went up for their first flight, Sellers acknowledged: ‘Not much to teach you here!’ Once they had completed three successful circuits and landing, Sellers wanted to see what Beurling could really do: ‘lets go take a look at England!’

  With Beurling free to express himse
lf in the air for the first time in nearly a year, he put the Magister through its paces, looping-the-loop, performing barrel rolls, tight turns and spins; manoeuvres which were clearly not in that day’s authorisation book.

  Beurling was in his element. Teamed-up with Sellers, he was allowed to push the Magister to its limits, learning some of the fighter pilot’s tricks that would one day save his life. In between unofficial aerobatics, Beurling continued with the set syllabus, practicing instruments-only flying, cross-country exercises and, what were to Beurling, very basic manoeuvres, such as side-slipping and spins. All had to be seen to be mastered on dual-control before the trainees were permitted to perform them on solo:

  ‘Dogfighting was out, unless instructors were along to pull ambitious pupils out of trouble.

  Once the trainee pilots were allowed to fly solo, all this changed.

  ‘Every once in a while a couple of us would agree on a rendezvous, far away from home, and take a crack at each other.’

  Beurling and a pilot called Brown were in ‘combat’ on one occasion, when they nearly met with disaster: Flying at about 6,000ft, and from a mile apart, they dived on a collision course. As the two aircraft approached each other both pilots pushed the stick forward to go underneath, with one of them pulling back at the very last second. They could both chalk-up their first near-miss.

  Two of the pilots who Beurling particularly remembered from his EFTS days were Bob Seed and Paul Forster, and the three quickly became firm friends:

  ‘we’d hell around the sky together, getting in and out of our spots of trouble, none of it serious’.

  What Beurling and the Air Ministry considered to be ‘serious’, were probably two different things! For Beurling, the list excluded ‘shooting up’ local villages:

  ‘we’d come down low over workmen in the fields or on the roads, then pull up suddenly and blow their caps off with the slip-stream.’

  On one occasion, Beurling’s pals dared him to buzz the station’s control tower. Taking off in the Magister, Beurling hit the power, but instead of pulling back on the ‘stick’, held the nose down and screamed across the airfield directly towards the control tower. Pulling back at the very last moment, the Magister almost became vertical in its ascent. As the Magister strained to climb, Beurling saw a sentry dive over the tower rail to the ground ten feet below, who fortunately only received cuts and bruises. On landing, Beurling had to face the Chief Flying Instructor who had the authority to ground him, or even throw him off the course as a warning to others, and Beurling was fortunate only to receive a bawling-down; not his first and certainly not his last.

  When not in the air or studying, Beurling could be found honing his shooting skills. Another key to success in combat was the element of surprise, for which good eyesight was a bonus. Beurling accustomed his eyes to rapid changes in focus, from near to far horizons:

  ‘I would pick out a hill in the distance, then a tree on that hill, then a branch of that tree and bring my eyes to focus on it as quickly as possible.’

  By continually practicing this technique, Beurling was somehow able to train his eyes to refocus with extraordinary speed and clarity:

  ‘I found I could spot aircraft in the sky and distinguish what they were quicker than other fellows could.’

  This was very much an understatement. There are numerous testaments to Beurling reporting sighting aircraft, which his comrades only located much, much later.

  By mid-June, Beurling and the other trainee pilots had completed their fifty hours of elementary flying, and were ready to move on. Beurling had seven days leave coming to him and, while he’d usually stay on the base, between postings this wasn’t possible and so one of the station’s officers, called Webb, offered to put him up.

  In peacetime Webb had worked on the estate of Thomas Evelyn Scott-Ellis, 8th Baron Lord Howard de Waldron of Chirk Castle, Denbighshire, Wales, which is where the pair decided to head. Here, Beurling, who was accustomed to exploring in the wilds, enjoyed climbing and shooting, and even recalled a guided tour of the 8th Baron’s castle and being enthralled by his extensive collection of armour.

  At the end of their leave, Beurling and his friends Bob Seed and Paul Forster found their postings had been postponed due to bad weather, which had prevented the previous course passing out. The three joined their other friends at an airfield near Peterborough, where they kept their hand in by flying Tiger Moths.

  On 23 June 1941, George arrived at his new posting, No. 8 Service Flying Training School near Montrose. RAF Montrose was situated between Aberdeen to the north and Dundee to the south, with the sea on one side of the airfield and the town on the other. The station was serviced by a grass airstrip with sand all round it, which used to blow up in great clouds during strong winds. Training took place with flying in the morning and lectures in the afternoon or visa-versa, depending on the weather and which part of the course the pilots were on. Church parade was on one Sunday a month, accompanied by a band of bagpipes and drums, with the station’s guest night on a similar rotation.

  Montrose had been the training ground of a number of famous fighter pilots, including ‘Paddy’ Finucane, Richard Hillary, Tom Neil and Peter Townsend; Beurling’s name would soon be added to their illustrious ranks. Already stationed at Montrose was Bill Allen, with whom Beurling had teamed up at Initial Training Wing.

  While at Montrose, they flew a refresher on Miles Masters after their enforced break, with Beurling practicing formation as well as instrument and night flying, along with some authorised low-flying, beating-up ground targets.

  On 2 July, around two weeks after his arrival, Beurling had a lucky escape when he was involved in a wheels-up landing while under instruction in a Master. Moments after take-off, the engine seized and Beurling’s instructor, H.H.C. Holdness, took the controls, landing the crippled trainer in a stony field. The aircraft was a complete right-off, but the two men walked out of the wreckage unscathed. Despite this, Beurling felt that he could have made a better job of it and was somewhat peeved that Holdness had taken over the controls.

  On more than one occasion Beurling nearly got himself into a whole load of trouble. One incident concerned the ‘buzzing’ of a nearby farmhouse, where one of the pilots, Charles Chambers, was staying with his wife. Chambers had apparently asked Beurling to give him a wake-up call, a service Beurling obligingly carried out by diving 2,000ft with full throttle and fully-fine pitch, only pulling up at the last second before he went, ‘in through the roof and out the Chambers’ bedroom window’. Mission accomplished, Beurling suddenly became aware of an aircraft on his tail and recognised the markings as those of Wing Commander McKenna, the Chief Flying Instructor. There then followed half an hour of banking, tight turns, side-slipping and weaving, as Beurling was pursued, trying at all times to hide his aircraft’s serial number. Finally McKenna was forced to peel off, running short of fuel and Beurling found his way back to Montrose, making a wide approach as if he had been flying off to the south of the airfield, rather than over the Grampians, where the ‘air-duel’ had taken place. The plan failed and immediately on landing the flight sergeant ordered him to report to the Chief Flying Instructor’s office:

  ‘Young man, exactly what in hell were you doing, diving on that farmhouse at half past seven? Trying to frighten the farmer’s daughters out of their nightshirts?’

  A quick-thinking Beurling offered the none too plausible reply that he thought he had seen something ‘flash’ on the ground and thought that someone might have ploughed in, so he had gone down to investigate, ‘according to orders.’

  ‘All I can say, Beurling, is that I never saw a quicker ruddy investigation in my life. Carry on, then. You ought to do very well in this business.’

  Evidently, the Wing Commander had appreciated Beurling’s dexterity in out-manoeuvering him in the air.

  Another incident that occurred was of far greater concern to the authorities. One of the trainee pilots had re-mustered and, as such, had been all
owed to retain his sergeant’s stripes. These he used to the full, insisting on marching the men to and from classes, and throwing his weight around in their hut. Beurling had given the odd bit of advice to the NCO, inviting him to ‘button it’ and, eventually, the two came to blows, with the Sergeant faring the worst. Beurling was summoned to the Station Commander’s office where he denied all knowledge of the incident and suggested the Sergeant had walked into the door in the blackout. Furthermore, he had a hut-full of witnesses who would swear that he had spent the evening studying. Having no option but to dismiss the case, the Group Captain saw Beurling later that day and, as the two exchanged salutes, the Group Captain paused to give some advice he had considered passing on during their earlier encounter:

  ‘If I were you, I’d save some of that unbounded energy of yours for the Germans. You may need it someday.’

  As the course progressed, the pilots went on to fly Hawker Hurricanes. The commander of the Hurricane Flight was fighter ace, Flying Officer Hamilton Charles Upton, DFC, who had flown during the Battle of Britain with Nos. 43 and 607 Squadrons. Upton, a fellow Canadian, had ten ‘kills’, one shared and a ‘probable’ to his name. He had been awarded the DFC, London Gazette 29 April 1941.

  Beurling described Upton as:

  ‘not only a swell fellow, but a grand instructor. Upton handed out the sort of cockpit drill which gave people confidence.’

  His experience of flying the fighter under all conditions meant that Upton was able to pass on details, not only of the aircraft’s little foibles, but also of the manoeuvres which would never appear in any of the RAF’s instructional manuals – tricks which one day might save their life in combat.

  Beurling commented that the Hurricane was a great aircraft to fly, and that he found it, ‘light as a feather on the ailerons and will roll just by putting the pressure of a finger on the controls.’ Observing the Hurricane’s tendency to drop a wing when coming in to land, he added that, ‘you can swipe the undercart off her and ground-loop quickly as winking.’