Joining 74 Squadron in the autumn of 1938, John Freeborn was to become its longest serving pilot, seeing continuous action in the skies over Dunkirk, throughout the Battle of Britain and into the spring of 1941. In that time he was credited with 13 combat victories and one shared — though the total was very likely higher — and he won two DFCs. He flew more operational hours than any other pilot during the Battle of Britain.
He was also involved on the second day of the war in a tragic episode, the misdirected interception of what were mistakenly assumed to be enemy aircraft over the Thames Estuary, which resulted in the squadron’s Spitfires shooting down two Hurricanes, one of whose pilots was killed. The episode was subsequently christened the “The Battle of Barking Creek”.
John Connell Freeborn was born in Middleton, Leeds, in 1919, the son of a branch manager with the Yorkshire Penny Bank. He was educated at Leeds Grammar School from where he joined the RAF Reserve of Officers in January 1938. A natural pilot, he went solo after only 4 hours 20 minutes and was credited with phenomenal accuracy in air firing exercises.
In October 1938 he was posted to 74 Squadron, which was equipped with Spitfires the following February. In July 1939 he was one of the 74 Squadron pilots who took their Spitfires to France to celebrate Bastille Day with the French Air Force.
When war broke out on September 3, 1939, the squadron was based at Hornchurch. From there, on September 6 it was scrambled to intercept what were thought to be a pair of Messerschmitt 109s, but were in fact Hurricanes of 56 Squadron which had themselves been scrambled from North Weald on an early-morning air raid alert. Both Hurricanes were shot down, Freeborn accounting for the aircraft of Montague Hulton-Harrop who was killed. The pilot of the second Hurricane survived.
At the subsequent general court martial both Spitfire pilots felt that they were let down by their own commanding officer, the soon-to-be-celebrated ace “Sailor” Malan, who gave evidence against them, appearing to try to evade responsibility for his squadron’s attack. Nevertheless, both his pilots were completely exonerated over what was regarded as a tragic accident. Fighter direction by ground controllers was at that stage a long way from the sophistication it was to achieve in the Battle of Britain.
When the “Phoney War” period came to an end with the Wehrmacht’s Blitzkrieg against France and the Low Countries in May 1940, Freeborn was soon in action with 74 Squadron, covering the British Expeditionary Force’s retreat to, and escape from, Dunkirk. A Junkers Ju 88 he attacked on May 21 remained unconfirmed, but on the following day he had his first combat victory over one of these twin-engined bombers over the sea north of Calais. In six intensive days of air fighting 74 Squadron scored 19 confirmed kills, two of them credited to Freeborn. Finally, he was himself hit by fire from Ju88s and had to force-land his Spitfire and make his way to Calais, from where he was returned in a Blenheim to England.
Throughout July and August No74’s engagement with the Luftwaffe was one of unremitting intensity. On August 11 the squadron was scrambled on no fewer than four occasions. Freeborn shot down two Me110s and a 109 that day and counted a further 109 as a “probable”. By the time he was awarded his first DFC on August 17 he had at least seven combat victories under his belt and many probables — and had been shot down once again, on the very day of his award.
He was made a flight commander on August 28, and continued to take a toll of the enemy on a seamless spell of operations that lasted until well beyond the conclusion of the Battle of Britain, to the very end of 1940. By the time he was rested from operations in March 1941 he had been in continuous frontline service for ten months, an extraordinary record. He had been awarded a Bar to his DFC in February.
He now spent a period with an operational training unit instructing overseas pilots on flying the Spitfire, before going to the US, first to train pilots at bases in Alabama and then to test and evaluate new American types including the P51 Mustang, P38 Lightning and the P47 Thunderbolt.
By December 1942 he was back on operations with 602 (Spitfire) Squadron, escorting bombers in attacks on German shipping and installations on the Dutch and French coasts. In June 1943 he was appointed CO of 118 Squadron, a Spitfire unit again escorting bombing raids, before being sent to Italy in 1944 as Wing Commander Flying of 286 Wing, which was tasked both with the air defence of Allied airfields and installations in Italy and attacks on German targets in the Balkans. At the end of the war he was in a training post at RAF Netheravon.
He left the RAF as a wing commander in 1946 and for some years worked for Tetley Walker as regional director for the company’s Minster brand of soft drinks. In retirement he moved to Spain but had latterly returned to the UK and lived in Southport, Merseyside.
Though he had been cleared of any blame for the death of Montague Hulton-Harrop in 1939, his fellow RAF fighter pilot’s death in such circumstances was always in his thoughts. Only last year he said: “I think about him nearly every day. I always have done. I’ve had a good life — and he should have had a good life, too.”
His wife, Rita, whom he married during the war and with whom he had a daughter, died in 1980. In 1983 he married his second wife, Peta. She died in 2001.
Wing Commander John Freeborn, DFC and Bar, wartime fighter ace, was born on December 1, 1919. He died on August 28, 2010, aged 90
At a time when British soldiers are returning from Afghanistan maimed by improvised explosive devices (IEDs), it is heartening to reflect on the positive, post-conflict experience of one officer who was severely disabled in North Africa during the Second World War.
Lieutenant Geoffrey Daish nearly died in Tunisia in 1943 when his Royal Engineer troop was caught in a minefield. After his right leg was amputated above the knee, it took eight months of medical care before he was able to work, yet he forged a career as an engineer engaged in the development of jet engines for aircraft, first with Frank Whittle at Power Jets and then with Armstrong Siddeley. Later, he became involved in pioneering work with Rolls-Royce Anstey on gas turbine engines for power generation for the oil and gas industry and the Royal Navy.
At the time of his injury there was no penicillin available to prevent infection and artificial limbs were still relatively primitive. Nevertheless, after rehabilitation, he began walking in Scotland and played competitive tennis into his fifties.
His stamina can be put down to his early focus on physical exercise and to his stoic family background. An enthusiast for courses in body strengthening, he rowed for the winning Magdalene College first boat in the May Bumps at Cambridge, where he had followed his father, the distinguished civil servant Tom Daish.
After being discharged from the Army, he joined Frank Whittle’s Power Jets as a technician, working on the development of early jet engines and analysing the new technology of flight test measurement experiments using Lancaster bombers. When Power Jets was dissolved in 1946, he transferred to Armstrong Siddeley, continuing to develop jet engines after the merger with the Bristol Aero Engine Company in 1959. After Bristol Siddeley was in turn merged with Rolls-Royce, he focused on the development of gas turbine propelled engines for marine and industrial purposes.
His pioneering work in jet propulsion was extended to gas turbines and led to some impressive developments. Over a 20-year period, the Royal Navy’s new generation of frigates, destroyers and carriers were equipped not with steam but with gas turbine propulsion. Daish worked on the performance measurement and control systems, including those of HMS Invincible and HMS Illustrious.
The technology was soon extended to industrial use in electricity generation, so the blackouts of the 1970s were eliminated through gas turbine engines which could generate electricity, at the peak load, within minutes. A further extension of its use was in the extraction of oil and gas from the North Sea.
Retirement from industry brought him the pleasure of painting — especially of aircraft, for which he was to win a number of disabled servicemen’s awards. He won a fine arts award in the War Pensioners 1990 National Homecraft and Art Exhibition with a painting of restoration work being undertaken on a Spitfire. This painting also won the RAF Association Trophy in the Midlands region presented to him in January 1991.
His love of writing poetry resulted in three books of collected works. One of his poems won the Financial Times Christmas Literary Competition; entitled The Lost Leader it was written, with the help of a little Glenmorangie, after Margaret Thatcher resigned as Prime Minister in 1990. The opening stanza read:
But for a couple of voters she left us Faced with defeat in the very first round Forced to resign, though misfortune bereft us Upset the market, devalued the pound.
He read his final poem about the obscure ancient City office of Deputy Gauger, to which he had been appointed, at a banquet in London’s Guildhall in 2006 shortly before one of his two sons-in-law, now Sir John Stuttard, became Lord Mayor of London.
The wartime amputation of his leg resulted in frequent pain and discomfort which he endured for almost 70 years. It also had a strange side effect. Every time the variable English weather was about to change, his injury informed him long before the Meteorological Office announced their forecast. Daish never sought sympathy or special attention. His disability did not prevent him from achieving more than the average man. He had a successful career and remained fit and independent to the end.
His wife Elizabeth, née McCall, predeceased him. He is survived by two daughters.
Geoffrey Daish, marine and industrial engineer, was born on February 28, 1920. He died on July 18, 2010, aged 90
Colin de Mowbray crowned a remarkably eventful service in the Royal Navy with many years organising competitive round-the-world sailing. He brought an intense professionalism and a cheerfully mischievous spirit to both careers.
During the 1982 Falklands conflict he was second-in-command of the frigate Alacrity captained by Commander Chris Craig. With others she did her share of bombarding Argentine positions but on May 11 it was the efficient Alacrity that the Task Force Commander, Admiral “Sandy” Woodward, chose to circumnavigate East Falkland by night.
The objective was to cause as much harassment as possible and also — in an almost unspoken coincidence of thought between Craig and Woodward — to test, in the most dangerous way possible, for the presence of mines in Falkland Sound, the planned route for invasion shipping. Woodward remarked: “This was Victoria Cross material, but, strangely, only if it went wrong.”
Having woken the Argentine garrison with starshell for miles around, Alacrity found the Argentine naval transport Isla de los Estados and, in the only surface action of the war between British and Argentine ships, swiftly sank it with its cargo of aviation fuel. When the freighter Atlantic Conveyor was hit by an Exocet missile and was sinking and on fire, Alacrity went close enough to pull her liferafts away from an imminent explosion, saving many lives.
Colin John de Mowbray was born in 1945. He was a scion of an ancient family of nobility — a Thomas Mowbray appears in Shakespeare’s Richard II. He entered the Navy in 1963 and qualified as a helicopter pilot in 1969. Based at Singapore he flew with 847 Squadron Wessex 5s as a “jungly” pilot on Royal Marine commando operations. In the carrier Albion with 848 Squadron he took part in disaster relief in Bangladesh after the devastating 1970 cyclone.
His extensive and varied flying duties also included piloting her Wasp helicopter aboard the frigate Tartar; an exchange appointment with the US States Navy at Norfolk, Virginia, and from 1982 to 1985 command of 845 Squadron flying Wessex 5 helicopters, again in the commando role. In 1975 he placed by helicopter a sentry box with two Royal Marines on the islet of Rockall, often disputed territory.
Ashore, he was the staff officer responsible for inspecting helicopter flights of frigates and destroyers for the Flag Officer Carriers and Amphibious Ships and, unusually, was military assistant to the commanding general in Hong Kong. His final tour, for which he was appointed MBE, was to oversee a large expansion in the numbers, scope and activities of the Reserve Air Branch, necessarily needing three people to relieve him.
De Mowbray was a constant source of imaginative entertainments, some of which may not have amused his seniors. While CO of 845 Squadron he founded the exclusive “Junglies cocktail party” — now an annual event — and, having noticed how many there seemed to be, a party for all Fleet Air Arm people named Colin — a great success, “it obviated introductions”. In 1984 he invented the Fleet Air Arm’s five-man Unicycle Display Team, which, after manoeuvres akin to an air display, culminated in a spectacularly posed crash.
Having left the Navy in 1994, de Mowbray became expedition leader for three voyages up the Irrawaddy river in the Irrawaddy Princess. In 1995 he cycled round both islands of New Zealand in aid of his favourite charity, the Ocean Youth Trust.
Following in his mother’s footsteps and those of other relations, he had been elected to the Royal Cruising Club in 1964, having since 1958 established a reputation as an offshore yachtsman, and subsequently he found time to undertake several demanding voyages including the 1989 two- handed Round Britain race in his 30ft sloop Fidget.
Thus in 1996 he was selected to skipper the vessel Chrysolite in the Clipper Round the World yacht race, coming fourth out of ten competitors. Founded and chaired by Sir Robin Knox-Johnston, the first person to sail alone non-stop round the world, the Clipper Ventures organisation has since 1996 conducted circumnavigation races every two years, currently in 68ft boats. Crews are volunteers from many walks of life, pay for their berths or obtain sponsorship and are required to undergo a challenging aptitude and training programme. Forty per cent in the current race started as novices.
De Mowbray worked for Clipper Ventures as race director and then as overall operations director for 14 years, travelling around the world while visiting the staging ports for each leg of the races. His management skill and cheerful leadership made him many friends in many nations. Knox-Johnston paid tribute to de Mowbray’s enthusiasm and breezy humour, and his contribution to Clipper Ventures and his continued involvement with the Clipper Race Yacht Club after he retired a year ago.
De Mowbray is survived by his wife, Vanessa, daughter of Admiral of the Fleet Sir Michael Pollock, First Sea Lord, and their son and two daughters.
Lieutenant-Commander Colin de Mowbray, MBE, naval aviator and offshore yachtsman, was born on April 12, 1945. He died of a heart attack on July 11, 2010, aged 65
Soldier who won the DSO on D-Day for coolly directing mine-clearing operations after being wounded in a mortar explosion
Allan Younger, always known as “Tony”, won one of the first DSOs on D-Day. Commanding 26 Assault Squadron Royal Engineers, his task was the clearing of mines and other obstacles to ensure the landing on Juno Beach of the 3rd (Canadian) Division forming, with the 3rd (British) Division, the assault landing force of 1st Corps under General Sir John Crocker.
Guiding his AVRE (armoured vehicle Royal Engineers) with its mine-clearing plough required him to stick his head out of the turret. This procedure endured only until a German mortar bomb blew away his radio aerials and burst one of his eardrums. Unable to communicate his orders to the rest of his squadron by radio, he dismounted and directed his AVREs to clear routes through the sand dunes on to the ground just beyond the beach — still being contested by the infantry in face of intense mortar, machinegun and small arms fire.
Despite the intense pain in his ear, he remained in charge until his squadron’s tasks were completed, including the removal of mines and demolition charges on the bridges leading into and through the village of Courseulles, on one route leading to Caen. He accepted evacuation only when his increasing deafness made it impossible to continue in effective control. He returned to resume command of 26 Assault Squadron in time to lead it during the operations to clear Walcheren Island and the Scheldt estuary in OctoberNovember 1944.
Allan Elton Younger came from a family of Royal Engineers, his father, grandfather and an uncle all having served with the Corps. He was educated at Gresham’s, RMA Woolwich and — after service in France, Holland and Germany — at Christ’s College, Cambridge. As a subaltern, he went to France with the 61st Field Company RE in the British Expeditionary Force. Tall, slim and invariably calm no matter what the situation, he became involved in the organisation (such as could be managed) of the evacuation from Dunkirk in 1940.
Graduation from the short wartime course at the Staff College, Camberley, was followed by appointments first on the personnel then training staffs at the British headquarters in Rangoon until Burmese independence in 1948.
From then until the outbreak of the Korean war in 1950, he commanded the Engineer Training Centre in Malaya, during the first two years of the communist insurgency in the Federation. Then he went to Korea in command of 55 Independent Field Squadron RE. In common with most British units hastily dispatched to Korea, his squadron was ill-equipped for the country’s harsh winters, but was able to make good the situation with American clothing, equipment and stores acquired in exchange for Scotch whisky — the US forces being “dry”.
Until the formation of the 1st Commonwealth Division — after much huffing and puffing in Whitehall and the Australian, Canadian and New Zealand capitals — in late 1951, Younger’s field squadron was on call to both Commonwealth brigades and occasionally to US units. He was able to respond only due to the generous provision of road and bridge-building materials by the Americans. He was awarded the US Silver Star in 1951 and pressure was relieved to some extent by the formation of a British divisional engineer regiment to serve the new division.
On return to England, he became the Chief Instructor of one of the three colleges of RMA Sandhurst before being appointed commanding officer of 36 Engineer Regiment in 1960, serving in the UK and Kenya and appointed OBE. In 1963 he was sent to the US Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth as the British exchange instructor, to be reminded of the very different staff procedures used by the American and British Armies he first discovered in Korea.
On return to England in 1966 he joined the mysteriously named Programme Evaluation Group. This was a team of one-star officers, one from each service, who Denis Healey, as Minister of Defence, used to seek out information he needed to determine one strand of policy or another. Known as the “whizz-kids”, they met with no little suspicion.
From 1967 to 1969 he was Chief Engineer at Headquarters UK Land Forces at Wilton and was promoted major-general two years later to become Chief of Staff at the Nato headquarters Allied Forces Northern Europe in Oslo.
He completed his service as the Senior Army Directing Staff member at the Royal College of Defence Studies in London and, after leaving the Army in 1975, became Director-General of the Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies until 1978.
He was a Colonel-Commandant Royal Engineers from 1974 to 1979 and published a memoir, Blowing our Bridges, in 2004.
He is survived by his wife, Diana, née Lanyon, and three daughters.
Major-General A. E. Younger, DSO, OBE, Chief of Staff AFNORTH, 1970-72, was born on May 4, 1919. He died on July 5, 2010, aged 91