103 MU at Aboukir

[Birgir Thorisson]

According to then Group Captain Cross, Aboukir was the largest RAF depot in the Middle East, and handled all types of aircraft. (He spells it Abu Sueir on this page, but seems to be talking of the same place which elsewhere in the book is spelled Aboukir.)
The bulk of the workforce was civilians, Maltese being most numerous, then Greeks, and in fact all sorts of nationalities. The supervising staff was RAF. (This from his autobiography, "Straight and level".)

There are interesting discrepencies between his account of the interceptions, and an account that appeared in 1978 in the magazine "Air Pictorial" about stratospheric raiders, by Christopher Argyle.

The most striking was that according to both, Genders had to bail out into the sea after shooting down the second Ju 86. Cross states that he was rescued almost at once by an egyptian boat. According to Argyle, Genders had to swim for 23 hours to the shore, and then walk back to Aboukir.

I am also pretty certain that the Greenborough crowd published somewhere a detailed article about the spitfire modifications in Aboukir, but haven´t been able to locate it in my stash of old Air Enthusiast/Air International magazines. (I have very little after 1985).

Birgir Thorisson.

[Brian Bines]

For the 6-9-42 there is Ju86R1 5101 of 3(F)/123 in crashlanding with 60% damage at Bir el Abd following Feindbeschuss ( Luft QM's report dated 6-10-42 ).

[Chris Going]

Small gloss, really, on the GAF Recon sortie rates over Egypt in 1942.
2/123 figures give FET64/42 flown on 10 March 1942 (Alexandria); FET105/42 on 16 March 1942 (Aboukir+, this 1/121); FET146/42 on 31 May 42(Alexandria); FET154/42 on 12 June 1942(Alexandria), and FET246/42 on 20 July 1942 (Alexandria), and FET283/42 on 17 October 1942 (Alexandria).

Might be useful for rates.


best,

ChrisG

[Aussie7]

Brian,

Nelson's career was covered in the June & July 2009 issues of Flypast (which I appear to have unfortunately thrown out !!) and from memory he didn't make any air claims with any of his various RAF units. As he was OC of the High Altitude Flt maybe his logbook entries refer to unit claims whilst he was 'the Boss'. I have seen DFC/DSO citations listing unit claims which read like personal claims, causing confusion to novice historians down the ages.

Ian Westworth