Blighty Thank God

03/06/2024

80 years ago, on June 6, 1944, my father, Flt Sgt Ron Chapman, was 5,000+km from the Normandy D-Day landings. Stationed in Egypt, he was probably ‘cheesed off’.

He had been overseas two and a half years, with no end in sight.

His diary for 1943, on which my ‘Blighty Thank God’ podcast series is based, reflects how being away from home for so long was hard.

One of the things getting to him and his colleagues was that while they were enduring diseases and unbearable heat - troops from all over the world were arriving in the UK as part of the invasion build up.

In the diary he reports one resentful colleague felt ‘foreigners’ were enjoying themselves in the UK while British troops were fighting overseas.

Since leaving the UK, he had almost been killed when his fuel-starved plane crashed, he witnessed a good friend die when his plane plunged into the ground - and there were other colleagues who died horrible deaths. All detailed in the podcast.

When the D-Day invasion began it was a sign that going home to Blighty might become a reality.

15/03/2024

One ‘Blighty Thank God’ episode highlights the Bristol Blenheim V plane - or as pilots dubbed it - the ‘Grisly Bisley’.

Through research into my late father’s (Flt/Sgt. Ron Chapman of St. Albans, UK) 1943 war diary I learned how it earned its macabre reputation. I discovered at least 24 Bisley crashes in the Middle East 1942-44, most during 1943.

Even more damning was that the plane’s fatal flaws were well known by senior RAF leaders. One Wing Commander described the Bisley as “an appalling aircraft”. It “barely flew” because of its extra weight, but no additional power.

Sadly, I also discovered names of men who paid with their lives for its failings.

Two crew and a passenger in BA101 perished February, 1943 after port engine failure, causing a forced landing near Sharjah. The plane flipped over.

Pilot Flt/Sgt Anthony Williams, 29, of Derby (married) and navigator Flt/Sgt William Hubbard, 22, of Essex are buried at the Alamein Memorial in Egypt. First Lt. the Hon. Alan Balzano Hailey, 42, of London is commemorated at Brookwood Memorial in the UK.

In May, 1943 21-year-old Flt/Sgt William Symons of Hove, Sussex burned to death, trapped in BA 603 after its engine failed as it landed at RAF Masirah, Oman.

Then in July, 1943 the crew of BA 500 - pilot Flt/Sgt Don Nash, 22, of Basingstoke; navigator Flt/Sgt George Keir, 33, of Montrose; and wireless operator Flt/Sgt Montrose Sublet, 28, of Maylands, W. Australia - were killed when their plane grounded at RAF Masirah, bursting into flames.

The ‘Blighty Thank God’ podcast tells stories about WW2 and aviation and is available on Apple, Spotify and other podcast platforms.

PICTURE: Flt/Sgt Ron Chapman in the weight-adding gun turret of another crippled Bisley that force landed off Saudi Arabia.

05/03/2024

Visit the website https://j-aircraft.com/captured/capturedby/hurricane/captured_hurricane.htm to see pictures of British Hawker Hurricane Mark IIb fighter - BE208.
Two show it in RAF markings, crashed in Singapore Feb., 1942. The 3rd is with it decked in Imperial Japanese Army Air Force (IJAAF) livery, dated 1943.
Manufactured in either Hawker’s Langley or Brooklands factory, the website outlines how the Hurricane ended up in Japanese hands after Singapore’s fall. To my surprise my father - Flt Sgt. Ron Chapman - played a 6,000km part in its long journey from the UK to Asia.
He, and the plane, arrived in West Africa Nov-Dec, 1941. As a ferry pilot, he tested the re-assembled Hurricane and then flew it in a series of ‘hops’ over dense African jungle, across searing desert and then along the lush Nile Delta to Cairo, Egypt arriving Dec 20, 1941.
My 12-part podcast ‘Blighty Thank God’, available on Apple and Spotify, tells stories I found and researched in his lost war diary.
Flt Sgt Chapman flew the single-seater plane in support of the North Africa campaign. But planes were also desperately needed to defend Singapore.
After delivery to Cairo the plane, and 232 Squadron, were diverted to Indonesia arriving Feb,1942.
Days after becoming 232 Sq/Ldr ‘Rickey’ Brooker, was shot down in BE208 as he attacked Japanese bombers. He force landed in a ditch. The Hurricane was captured, repaired, flown and tested by the IJAAF.
The IJAAF pilot would have found the Hurricane dived faster and had better pilot protection than the Japanese Zero; but the Zero could out climb, out turn and out run the Hurricane - not a good combination.

26/02/2024

Meeting VIPs during WW2.

17/02/2024

This wedding photograph of my late parents - Ron and Monica Chapman - at St. Stephen’s Church, St. Albans, October 1946, was familiar to me growing up.

After researching my father’s WW2 diary, discovered after both had died, it threw up a number of questions.

My father wears his RAF uniform. But where did my mother get her wedding dress?

In his diary my father mentions buying silk a number of times while stationed in the Middle East. In his photo album he’s pictured outside a silk shop in Manama, Bahrein. He also talks about colleagues doing the same.

Could he have acquired enough silk for his future wife’s big day dress?

Clothing coupons and rationing were in place during the war and continued until well after their marriage.

As an RAF pilot my father had access to parachutes. Once used parachutes were discarded. Servicemen could take them home.

Just one would provide a huge amount of clothing fabric. After the war, up and down the country many brides made their wedding dresses from parachutes.

Is that where my mother’s dress came from?

Newspapers published stories about dedicated young women determined not to let any fabric go to waste, becoming symbols of resourcefulness and creativity.

Far from being extravagant, wearing such a wedding dress was seen as honouring the service of their men.

07/02/2024

My WW1 veteran grandfather John “Jack’ Chapman very likely worked on a highly secret WW2 RAF project being developed close to his home by De Havilland - the ‘wooden wonder’ Mosquito aircraft.

The project was being developed at Salisbury Hall just a few miles from Napsbury Avenue, London Colney where he lived and where my father Flt Sgt Ron Chapman grew up.

It must have been ‘the talk of the town’ when a German spy was arrested nearby - and a jolt to the British authorities - in May, 1941.

Luckily agent Karel Richter (Pictured) , 29, was nabbed by PC Alec Scott near the North Orbital and London Colney Roundabout. Two lorry drivers became suspicious after they asked Richter for directions to “The North’. Invasion fears meant all road signs had been removed.

It turns out Richter’s intended target was Cambridge. But he actually parachuted into a field beside White Horse Lane, London Colney where he hid up.

Despite having half a salami sausage, bread and some sandwiches, hunger (and cold) forced him out of his hiding place and into the arms of the law.

Richter, codenamed Artist, never completed his mission to deliver money and a spare wireless crystal to another German agent already in the UK. Under questioning, Czech-born Richter refused to ‘turn’ to be a double agent, working for the British.

He was tried for treason and hung, though he fought the jailers and hangman as he headed to the gallows. His ex*****on took an agonising 17 minutes rather than the normal seconds

28/01/2024

WW2 movie moment.

23/01/2024

Golden flyers get caught!

20/01/2024

02/01/2024

January 1, 1942 was a normal working Thursday for my grandparents, John and Jane Chapman. No Bank Holiday.

There was a war on, and my grandfather worked for nearby De Havilland that made vital aircraft such as the Mosquito for the RAF.

But New Year’s Day 1942 was when they received the news – in an official telegram, delivered to their semi-detached house home at 35, Napsbury Avenue, London Colney, Herts.

Their son, Flt Sgt Ron Chapman had been in a plane crash.

Only weeks before they had said goodbye to him as he headed overseas to West Africa.

Now he was recovering from his injuries in a hospital in Palestine (today’s Israel.) Concussion, leg wounds, a smashed jaw and no teeth, but he was alive. Thankfully he’d received medical attention soon after the crash in northern Sudan the day after Boxing Day, 1941.

British surgeons fixed him up so that he was back flying by March, 1942.

The picture shows him climbing into the cockpit of a Hurricane Mk IIc – one of the first planes he flew on his return to piloting fighter planes from West to North Africa.

21/12/2023

When Ron Chapman left St Albans school in 1937, he could hardly have suspected that just five years later he would be piloting warplanes in the Middle East, part of the heroic fight against N**i Germany.

Much less being commemorated in the school’s magazine some eighty years later.

Now the school’s magazine Versa has posted an article about Neil Chapman’s family labour of love to remember his father, the ‘Blighty Thank God’ podcast.

Neil, who lives on Teesside, also attended St Albans School and left in 1972.

Quoted in the article: Neil said: “My father was like so many young men in the RAF, reluctantly forced to be thousands of miles away from home and in many ways the podcast is a tribute to all those reluctant warriors who served.

“Even though my father wasn’t on the front line, to my surprise I discovered he was always in danger. Death – from accidents and horrible diseases – lurked like a ghost throughout the diary. Many he knew or worked alongside were killed in horrible circumstances.

“My father thought he’d never survive the War, hence the podcast title – words of relief he wrote in his pilot’s log book on making it back to the UK, having been posted overseas very early in the war.” he added.

All of Ron’s grandchildren played a part in the podcast, voicing extracts from his diary.

Neil has had a distingujished career in communications with ICI and BP – where in 2010 he was part of the company’s response to the Deepwater Horizon tragedy off the US Coast – before becoming a respected communications trainer and a partner in the Houston-based firm WPNT Communications.