A Rare Picture of JEJ

[Kickinghorse1]

Here's a picture from my dad's collection that I'm sure the readers here will like.

My dad was a mechanic with RCAF 403 Wolf Squadron.

The picture was taken in Eindhoven Holland during Operation Market Garden.Cheers

Kickinghorse

[Jaap Woortman]

Kickinghorse,

Nice picture indeed, but No.403 Sqn. was from 01/03-10-44 till 21/22-10-44 at Grave/Keent
in the Netherlands and from 31-03-45 till 11-04-45 at Eindhoven airfield in the Netherlands.
So the picture was not taken during Market-Garden but 6 months later.
The German hangar was indeed at Eindhoven airfield. It was the Base Flight hangar for a long time.
At Grave/Keent there have been no hangars.

Jaap

[Kickinghorse1]

Operation Market Garden and Base 82 Grave Netherland

I have some wonderful notes from my dad’s journal about 403 Squadrons activities during Operation Market Garden. The Squadron moved into Holland and set up an Airfield at B82 Grave Netherlands. The picture I have of JEJ was likely taken at Eindhoven Holland around September 26 1944 when 403 Squadron met up with an Officer who informed them of “their best road chance” to make it to the not yet accessible base at Grave.

127 Wing left Base 68 at Le Culat Belgium on September 27 1944. There next airfield was Base 82 Grave Netherland where they remained until October 21 1944.
The main party arrived on October 1, 1944.

The journey was 130 miles and it took about 4 days for the convoy to get to Grave. Major ground and air battles were going on all around the convoy and continued when they got to B82.

I’ll start with the notes from September 26 1944. The move was interesting to say the least but, I’ll omit those stories for another time.

From the Number 1 Crew Journal:
September 26
Move on, this one looks really interesting. We will be lead truck- approx., 130 mile move, 3 road choices, roads on the tops of dykes no other access possible due to wet ground. Objective airfield not accessible yet at a place called Grave. Officer will meet us at Eindhoven to inform us of the best road chance. Road convoy is 6 crew trucks led by D.R. (Motor cycle). Not much “info” yet, got our equipment and gear loaded.

September 27
Pulled out at 7:30 AM-………..


This picture of JEJ was likely taken at Eindhoven around this date



October 1
Our main party arrived today, said the trip was good, no problems other than the lousy weather. The Tilburg Pocket Germans were back in Germany and the big parachute drop a major disaster. There’s a lot of aircraft jammed in here, we have 125 Wing’s Spit 14’s – 5 blade props. This place is too small for 8 sqaudrons, our grass can’t stand the traffic what with the wet weather and the coming of an early winter from what I see. We fixed up our campsite, scrounged some rations, going to avoid going to our mess as much as possible, using the word mess is a joke, standing in the open with a mess tin full of dehydrated crap in a sea of mud. You can’t even sit down. Cliff came up with some cocoa from his Red Cross girlfriend. It’s too bad she can’t hear all the very nice things said about her.
Another air raid again, a couple of land mines? dropped nearby. Lots of acc-acc fire but they never seem to knock anything down.

October 2
Another memorable day, dogfights everywhere, Jerry strafed head quarters 8 men injured in that one, one lost his leg. Dogfight overhead. Some new fast German jet shot down two Spit 14’s. First we’ve heard of this development. Strafing on far side of our field. Outside of our tent area plastered with Anti-personnel bombs no damage just a near miss. One man killed in the Tempest area. Our c/o Hamilton’s jeep shot full of holes. Canister explodes in the air scattering small anti-personnel bombs, they land 8 to 15 seconds later, don’t make much of a hole but scatter shrapnel on the surface.
An aircraft dive bombed, let go a bomb that landed near our tent and went deep into the soft mud and blew up a geyser of mud, luckily caused no damage.
No one has to be told to wear their tin hats these days. Near dusk artillery shells landed near bridge site – none our way.

October 3
Dreary cold wet day not much action of any sort. Slit trenches at work - about 5 feet deep now. Food conditions worse than ever. Can’t blame the cooks working in a sea of mud. We keep our little stove to ourselves and get by much better, really miss the eggs and green apples we got in Belgium and France. Holland is starving, German army cleaned out cattle, horses etc. All our tents are leaky some with acc-acc holes etc, everything mud splattered. Water rising
One fellow was stripped to his waist, with a tin hat full of water and a little mirror on a stick shaving about 50 feet from our tent when he collapsed dead - a small piece of shrapnel had nailed him in the spine - it took a couple on minutes to determine this, there was just a little blue mark where it hit. We got paid today 32 Dutch Guilders.

October 4
Working hard, miserable conditions, it gets dark now at 7:00 PM. It’s a long muddy hike to the mess. My left rubber boot is worn through, there are none in stores, in fact I don’t think we got any new stores right since Normandy. Anyways, I put cardboard in every day to keep most of the mud out. My foot is always soaking wet, noisy nights and soggy blankets. 403 got 3 Jerries today. This mysterious fast jet plane got another Spit from 125.
Our cook pots are moved to higher ground dike level. Some Dutch people are scrapping out our mess tins before we dump them. It’s embarrassing to see people that hungry when all we have is dehydrated potatoes and carrots.

October 5
Sure chilly in the mornings. Everyone dug into the side of the dike now to make a flat spot for your tent. Floods cut us off from the work area by the landing strips, so we made rafts from empty fuel cans and pole ourselves over. Front seems to be getting closer. Lots of firing. Rumours say we will soon be getting Spit 16’s.
We’re still getting by in our engine cover tent. The C.O. 403 Sqd. gave us a speech, said we were all dirty and not washing enough and not shaving enough. I admit we look pretty rough, there’s no firewood, no barbers, razour blades are getting dull, soap supplies are down. Aircraft come first anyway. We wash our clothes in gasoline that’s drained out of crashes or engine repair jobs that is forbidden to be put back into Aircraft even though our funnels are chamois lined. Gasoline cleans up oil but it is no hell for mud. I don’t know where our pilots sleep or what their mess is really like. I only hope it’s a lot better all around than ours.

October 6
Just after noon Jerry plastered us with anti personnel bombs right over our tent site – 4 killed 2 wounded. One regular bomb blew Ted Klapecki and John Neals tent all to hell but it went into soft ground deep enough to keep the shrapnel from flying around. Great display of fireworks at night and Bren gun fire.

October 7
Another real busy day – anti personnel - got one killed and 4 injured. Aircraft real busy. We now have 7 engine changes at least awaiting us. They say our hospital unit is very busy. We don’t actually know its location. No time for sightseeing around here.

Cheers,

Kickinghorse

[SMF144]

I've seen this picture before but poorly reproduced in a veteran's personal account of the war. Nice to see a better picture of it.

Stephen

[Jaap Woortman]

Thanks Kickinghorse for the information.
I will send this to my friends at the museum at Volkel Airbase who are studying the history of Grave airfield.

Jaap

[Larry]

Interesting photo as the style of the codes is most unusual and nothing like those reproduced in books and on scale models or real Spitfires painted up in Johnnie Johnson's honour! Was JE-J this aircraft in your photo 'his' original aircraft or a different one with the same codes?

[Kickinghorse1]

I'm certainly not an expert on JEJ but I noticed right away the style of the codes is very different from the modern depictions.

I looked through my dad's journal and found only a couple of references to JEJ. I have no other pictures.

Here's what was written:

From the Journal (As Written by Hand):

July 15/1944
We really got a lemon today KH-D 403 Squadron. Explosive cannon shell still in the starboard radiator. Nice mess, glycol line, hydraulics, ave gas, holes and undercarriage. Pilot was lucky to get it down in one piece if was flying at the time. 144 airfield split up. 443 squadron is forming 127. Their C/O is Johnny Johnson R.A.F. one of the top scoring fighter pilots still flying. They originated as a Canadian Squadron, West Coast for protection against Japan. You can tell them easily from us. Their uniforms are clean.

August 3/1944
Not many repair jobs, doing lots of inspections. Each squadron has ideally 20 aircraft on inventory, operating 12 aircraft as a squadron in the air, 13 aircraft take off in case one has a drop in revs, if not he comes down right away.
Our oldest aircraft belongs to Wing Commander Johnny Johnson R.A.F. who has flown it for all his victories and it doesn’t carry his squadron letter but his own initials JEJ.
Something big is in the wind, each aircraft has it’ own fuel dispersal, usually ringed by 4 gallon gas cans, so the fuel supply is not concentrated in one spot. Right now, each dispersal has a selection of numbered bombs (250-500 pounders), the numbers appear on the pilots maps as designated targets, bridges, road crossings, key targets etc. Our aircraft have been restricted from shooting at vehicle traffic using the roads in daylight, they keep reporting more and more German movement on the roads in daylight.


Hopefully somebody can identify this plane and possibly uncover some new information on it.


Cheers


Kickinghorse

[Jaap Woortman]

According to 2nd TAF Part 1 of Shores and Thomas, WC James Edgar Johnson flew from March '44 to March '45 the Spitfire Mk IX, MK392.

Jaap

[Chris Thomas]

Originally Posted by Jaap Woortman

According to 2nd TAF Part 1 of Shores and Thomas, WC James Edgar Johnson flew from March '44 to March '45 the Spitfire Mk IX, MK392.

Jaap

There are at least 3 photos of MK392, taken in summer 1944, autumn 1944, and early 1945. All show the unusual style of lettering for JE-J as in kickinghorse's photo, except that the lettering is a bit slimmer, the serifs less bold.

This suggests that in the above photo the original letters had been over-painted. This is reinforced by the absence of the 'sky' rear fuselage band and any trace of invasion stripes. As both these items were removed from 2nd TAF fighters early in January 1945 it would seem that the photo was taken late in MK392s career as JEJ.

Despite the caption to the photo, I think there is little doubt the photo was taken in 1945.
CT

[Allan125]

Hi Kickinghorse1

My late father was at 125 Wing HQ right through from Ford in the UK to Kastrup in Copenhagen. At Grave he slept in a pigsty and smoked German cigars to kill the smell of the pigs!!

I have recently come across a photo of the signals tent at Grave that he worked in, so it was nice to read about events there from the 127 Wing perspective.

Although in Dutch you should enjoy the photos, some of which I supplied, on the website of Peter van Bommel http://www.bommeltje.nl/website/vest...s-boven-grave/

Peter used to have English pages, and I typed up the 125 Wing ORB for the Grave period, but I can only find the Dutch version now.

cheers

Allan