Rapid Rundown: RAF Operations in the Middle and Far East 1945-1948 by Simon Gifford

Author:Simon Gifford [Gifford, Simon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fonthill Media
Published: 2014-12-11T08:00:00+00:00

A Liberator is refuelled prior to another supply dropping sortie.

With the successful completion of Operation Mastiff and the need to carry out continued airdrops to isolated Army units having greatly diminished, November 1945 saw a reorganisation of the RAF’s Liberator squadrons in India. Both of the Cocos Island based squadrons were disbanded, their last task being to transport RAF personnel off the islands. In India itself, both 357 and 358 Squadrons were also disbanded, leaving 159 Squadron and 355 Squadrons based at Salbani. The two squadrons were now solely focused on operating as transports due to the fact that having been supplied under the terms of lend-lease, all of the Liberators had to be disarmed shortly after the war. It was now a condition of their continued use by the RAF that the Indian-based aircraft were not to be involved in any combat situations, precluding their possible use in areas such as the Netherlands East Indies.

In early January 1946, the two squadrons were given the task of ferrying some eight tons of welfares supplied to Butterworth, where they were then transferred to Dakotas for transport to Singapore. This saw 159 Squadron dispatch a single aircraft per day, a workload much reduced from the peak of supply dropping operations a few months earlier. Amongst the crews involved was John Henderson:

I have record of only one more trip with 159, which was on 16 January to Penang returning the next day. The Penang trip was to deliver eighty-four boxes of tomato juice and took about eight and a half hours each way. 159 Squadron was a happy squadron, the RCAF and RAAF personnel mixing well with the RAF. I think they brought a looser discipline which suited us conscripts better rather than the pomp and ceremony which the regular career men preferred. The non-RAF men were demobbed very quickly at the end of the war and the squadron returned to an all RAF affair.

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