![]() Promoted twice, Strachan ended the war as a Flight Lieutenant. ‘The trick was to wait until the enemy was right on your tail and, at the last minute, cut the engine, sending your lumbering Lancaster into a plunging dive, letting the fighter overshoot harmlessly above,’ Strachan once recalled. Upon completing his 30th mission, he became entitled to a desk job, one that he refused, instead requesting to be trained as a bomber pilot.Īfter just seven hours of training, the fast-learning Strachan was allowed to fly solo and became known for his daredevil antics. He flew 30 raids over Europe a remarkable achievement considering the average for a bomber crew was around seven. Undeterred, Strachan eventually found his way into the RAF and trained as a wireless operator and air gunner, joining a bomber squadron tasked with making nightly raids over heavily defended German cities.Īfter just seven hours of training, the fast-learning Strachan was allowed to fly solo On his first try, the recruiting officer bluntly told Strachan that he wasn’t welcome. Although the RAF wanted new recruits, it often took many volunteers a number of attempts to finally be accepted. ![]() Billy Strachanīorn and raised in Kingston, Jamaica, Billy Strachan made his own way across U-boat infested waters to sign up for the RAF. ![]() ![]() He would stay in the RAF until his retirement in 1965. While we didn’t like the British Empire, we certainly didn’t want the Nazi Party coming down and running Jamaica for us.'īlair survived the war and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross in 1945. ‘He made one thing clear,’ Mark says of his great-uncle, ‘if Britain lost the war we would return to slavery. However, for Blair and many others from the Caribbean, King and Country was not their sole motivation for joining the ranks of the RAF. ‘So you would have a New Zealander gunner, a navigator from Jamaica, a bomb-aimer from Newcastle they all flew in the same aircraft, they all lived in the same quarters, they all fought and served together.’ ‘Everyone was mixed in together, ‘Mark remarks. Unlike the USA at the time who had segregated black units like the famous Tuskegee Airmen, the RAF had fully integrated aircrew in their planes. A black man landing in those circumstances had almost no chance of survival.’ Talking to HISTORY, Blair’s s great-nephew Mark Johnson described how John had an added pressure on top of all of that, ‘My great-uncle flew 33 operational missions over Europe during the war and each time he climbed in that aircraft he knew that if they went down, whereas his white crewmates would most likely be taken to a prisoner of war camp, he would be shot on the spot. Under the most intense pressure and conditions, the navigators had to make critical calculations by hand using maps, rulers and compasses to ensure the aircraft remained on track. Originally from St Elizabeth, Jamaica, Blair joined the RAF in 1941 and became a navigator in Halifax Bombers flying from Yorkshire. John Jellicoe Blair was one such recruit. They trained as pilots, navigators, air-gunners, flight engineers as well as wireless operators and all of them had joined voluntarily. Soon, the RAF welcomed and trained nearly 500 black Caribbean aircrew into its ranks, along with around 6,000 Caribbean ground crew. The armed forces needed as many men as possible and whilst the Army and Navy were slow to welcome black servicemen into their ranks, the RAF quickly went on a recruiting drive. However, little changed over the course of the next two decades and it wasn’t until just weeks after Britain had declared war on Germany in September 1939, that the colour bar was finally lifted once and for all. ![]() Read more about: Sport Walter Tull: The Tottenham Hotspur trailblazer and WW1 hero ![]()
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