The Final Few: The Last Surviving Pilots of the Battle of Britain Tell Their Stories by Dilip Sarkar

Author:Dilip Sarkar
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Amberley Publishing
Published: 2015-08-16T16:00:00+00:00

6

SQUADRON LEADER G. H. A. ‘BOY’ WELLUM DFC

On 5 August 1941, The London Gazette published a list of airmen awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. Among them was Flying Officer Geoffrey Harry Augustus Wellum, a Spitfire pilot of 92 Squadron who had celebrated his twentieth birthday only the previous day. The citation read,

This officer has been with his squadron since the evacuation of Dunkirk. During the recent offensive operations over France he has led his section and flight with great skill and determination. He has destroyed at least three enemy aircraft and damaged several others.

The astonishing fact is that before his twentieth birthday, Geoffrey Wellum had already fought through and survived the Battle of Britain – hence his nickname ‘Boy’.

Aged eleven, Geoffrey, an only child from Walthamstow, London, began boarding at Forest, a minor public school in Snaresbrook. When seventeen, this aviation-minded youth applied to the Air Ministry to be a pilot. Six months later, he followed the well-trodden path to Adastral House for selection. In spite of his very young age, Geoffrey was accepted. Before leaving Forest School, Geoffrey achieved another ambition and captained the First cricket XI; the sand of that last summer of peace, however, was rapidly running through the hourglass. On 28 July 1939, Geoffrey firmly left school days behind and entered the man’s world that was the RAF. On that day, still seventeen, he reported for ab initio flying training at 7 EFTS at Desford in Leicestershire. Flying, Geoffrey immediately decided, was ‘absolutely beautiful’. Although learning to fly did not necessarily come entirely naturally at to him at first, his instructor, Mr Hayne, clearly recognised some potential, conceding during a private pep-talk that Geoffrey ‘could possibly make a fighter pilot’. After around ten hours of dual tuition, Geoffrey soloed on a Tiger Moth. On that day, Hitler invaded Poland. Two days later, Britain and France declared war on Nazi Germany. The Second World War had begun – and eighteen-year-old Geoffrey Wellum would soon find himself in the very thick of it. Flying had already become an obsession for Geoffrey, his only ambition to be a professional RAF pilot – and a fighter pilot specifically.

Having successfully passed his ab initio course, Geoffrey found himself square-bashing at Hastings, learning how to be a serviceman. From there, Acting Pilot Officer Wellum was off to Little Rissington in Gloucestershire, to learn how to fly the North American Harvard with 6 FTS. A single-engined monoplane trainer, the Harvard provided fledgling pilots with experience of a modern fighter-like aircraft, prior to progressing to the types they would fly into battle – namely the Supermarine Spitfire and Hawker Hurricane. Looping and rolling over the Cotswolds, Geoffrey was now ‘enthralled’ by flying. His ground studies were tackled with somewhat less enthusiasm, though, leading to a dressing down by the Chief Ground Instructor. At Little Rissington, the loss of a friend while flying, Nick Bellamy, was another new experience young Pilot Officer Wellum had to deal with – sadly this loss would be the first of many.

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