Air defender back to see his fighting ground

A World War II hero for whom dog fights with the enemy were common and who later carried out important reconnaissance work was back in Malta last week celebrating his 90th birthday.

Group captain Roger Hilton-Barber DFC, RAF, (Retd) who is known as Jock not of Scotland but of the Bushveldt, as he strongly puts it, was born in South Africa.

While in Malta between 1940-41, he met Alice Godrich who was to become his wife and whose mother used to run a boarding house at 4, Ghar id-Dud Street, Sliema. He spent 13 months on the island.

He had left South Africa and gone to England to learn to fly and joined the RAF on a short service commission.

In 1940, he was in a ferry pool in England with the aim of collecting aircraft from the maintenance units and fly them over to France when the RAF was still there and try to rescue as many aircraft as they could and take them back to England.

Then he and Dickie Sudgen, another pilot, volunteered to fly Hurricanes out to Egypt and that is how they both ended up in Malta after the aeroplanes were directed to the island instead.

"That was 10 days after Italy declared war. It was a rather disastrous flight because of terrible weather over France from the deck right up to 30,000 feet.

"There were 12 Blenheims and 12 Hurricanes and I flew one Hurricane to Malta. I had to force land the Hurricane in France because the long-range tanks were not working and in doing so broke the tail wheel.

"I eventually managed to get a battery and pumped the fuel back into the engine and temporarily fitted a makeshift tail wheel and brought the aircraft here," he said in an interview.

He was posted out back to Rhodesia in August 1941 where he stayed until 1944. Later he was posted back to UK and joined 540 Squadron, which was made up of H and L Flights of the Photographic Reconnaissance Unit flying Mosquitoes.

He did photographic reconnaissance until the end of the war. In refitting a Hurricane Mk II to take photographs, the guns, and the armour plating were removed and extra fuel tanks put in the wings to give it a longer range.

He was eventually attached to 69 Squadron which was responsible for taking reconnaissance pictures where he shot ports and harbours in one go in southern Italy on the refitted Hurricane.

The logbook which he has preserved in mint condition includes the dates, the type and number of the aircraft, the name of the first pilot and of any other pilot.

Based in Malta, 69 Squadron carried out strategic reconnaissance missions mainly using Marylands until May 1942 when Spitfires began to carry out all reconnaissance missions.

Until then Capt. Hilton-Barber had served on fighters and got involved in dog fights flying Gladiators.

The Gladiator was a very good aeroplane but it was out of date and at that stage the Italian CR 42s were a real threat.

Looking up his log book, Capt. Hilton-Barber ran his fingers along the entries reading: Gladiator, gun test; flying practice and then interception 13 CR.42s which means fought and knocked some CR.42s down.

The Gladiators were single seaters and were equipped with Browning .303 machine guns.

The Hurricane had eight .303 guns but later heavier guns were used in fighters because with the .303, you could see the bullets bouncing off the armour plating of the JU88s, for example.

"The Germans had the big .5 guns and one hit from them and you'd had it."

They got on very well with the Maltese and he admired them terrifically: "The way they withstood the terrible bombing - they were magnificent".

"We had buses on the runway because of the fear of invasion. The Maltese drivers used to move these buses off the runway when we took off and put them back again.

"The pilots were very friendly with the submariners. Some of the pilots used to go out on patrols - although I didn't do that - and we used to be invited to cocktail parties in the submarine base.

"If there was an air raid, as happened once, they went and sat on the sea bottom and just carried on with the party and after the air raid you went up again."

After the war he returned to Rhodesia joining the Rhodesian Air Force, eventually becoming group captain, staying on until he retired.

Capt. Hilton-Barber was in Malta last in 1978. He lives in Zimbabwe.