The flying ace

Robert Spurdle's 80 Squadron. Photo / Supplied

James Russell recounts his grandfather's exploits as a fighter pilot in World War II

On April 25, 1994, as the old servicemen sat in the Whitianga RSA sipping handles of beer at the end of another Anzac day, a familiar face was missing. Two months earlier, across the harbour on the headland cemetery, the veterans had laid poppies on the casket of their old comrade, Robert Lawrence Spurdle.

As the sound of the Anzac bugle faded, the distant roar of an engine could be heard. The veterans knew that sound, and looked up to see a Spitfire crossing the sky.

At the controls was Tim Wallace, owner of Warbirds Over Wanaka, paying his last respects to one of New Zealand's great fighter pilots.

Spurdle - aka "Spud" or, to his family, Peter - was just 21 when he sailed for Britain in June 1940 to join the RAF.

In The Blue Arena , a book he wrote years later, there is a photograph of his fellow trainees ready to embark on the boat. Of eight men in the photograph, only three survived the war. Spurdle was one of the fortunate. He survived 564 sorties and received the Distinguished Flying Cross and bar for valour.

From the cramped cockpits of Spitfires and Kittyhawk aircraft he destroyed eight enemy aircraft, probably five others and damaged 15 more. Yet when he reached Britain, Spurdle could barely line up a target.

"Someone asked if we'd ever done fixed front gunnery," he recalled in The Blue Arena.

"'No? What? Not any?' And so we were told to go and have a squirt at a sandbank off the coast. Some seagulls got a hell of a fright! This was the total extent of our training with live ammunition and fixed front guns. The next time my guns were fired the enemy was the target."

This inexperience showed in the first dogfight with 74 Squadron - airmen led by the Spitfire ace, Squadron Leader "Sailor" Malan. In the confusion of twisting, diving planes, Spurdle lost sight of Malan along with everyone else. "I couldn't find a single Jerry. Twisting and turning, I couldn't see a damned aircraft! Nothing! The sky was clean and bare." Embarrassed, he returned to base alone.

It wasn't long before he tasted real action. Two months into operational service Spurdle found himself on the tail of a Messerschmitt 109 in a vertical dive from 27,000 feet. At what he guesses was about 650mp/h the Spitfire was "taut and quivering like a violin, as below the black 109 seemed to be slowly drifting up and the fields appeared to be lazily expanding".

Suddenly the wing of his Spitfire tore off, leaving a gaping hole in the fuselage. After a few moments' panic he ejected from the plane and deployed his parachute. But he wasn't yet out of danger.

"Something whining shrilly steamed past and I saw strange, twisted white lines drawn as into infinity. More of them and weird rushing sounds. I appeared to be the centre of a mad, wind-blown spider's web. Amazed, I heard the crackling, tearing sound of cannon fire like a giant ripping canvas, and then a high whistling shriek. Something big and black tore past me - a 109E.

"It climbed right in front of me, turning for another go. I cursed and wriggled frantically in the harness trying to draw my revolver. "There was a deep purring roar and 'P' flashed by, followed by 'S' - Steve and Wally! I laughed with relief."

With a grandstand view, Peter watched as his comrades destroyed the German plane, and he parachuted to safety, rejoining his squadron after five days' recuperation leave. But he was unable to recover as quickly from the fear of diving - and dying - in his Spitfire.

The day he returned to operations he was scrambled twice, and both times he was gripped by terrible fear. "My mouth dried, the palms of my hands got moist, the engine seemed to lose its power; fierce thoughts surged through my mind, black thoughts too: Ricalton and Hastings, my friends, dead. Kirkie too. Alright you bastards! Come and get it!"

One day his aircraft was hit: "Something flashed past my nose - I flew through the black cloud that streamed behind. Hell, that was close, my heart was banging and I felt sick. Nearly collided. I gave myself more oxygen. Thwack! Something hit my kite. Sounded like a pickaxe on an iron roof.

Hell, I've been hit - my hand shot up in reflex to the hood release and with a curse I realised that I'm a fool - bail out indeed! Yes, there's a hole down by the starboard flap panel. Where are those bastards? I turned and twisted - couldn't see a thing. I felt as big as a glasshouse. There's a hell of a lot of nattering on the RT - sounds like a party - Christ! If only I had a drink."

Spurdle tore off a second wing during his service, but this time he could only blame himself. On a no-fly day due to poor weather, he and some friends got stuck into several pink gins over lunch. When the sun came out in the afternoon, he decided to "requisition" the chief flying instructor's Tiger Moth, and take up some of his ground crew for a joyride.

As he puts it: "I don't remember much of the rest of the day - just some startling impressions of a great mansion, lawns, a great tree and running figures. I remember the tearing and rending of the smashed starboard wing folding back. And, later, coming to in an ambulance with a still figure on the adjacent stretcher."

His passenger lost a foot and Spurdle found himself in the dock of a court martial, where one of the witnesses was the gardener for Speke Hall, where he'd crashed. The gardener spoke in his defence, saying he had hit the tallest tree in the gardens.

The prosecuting officer replied: "Yes, but it was the lowest branch."

Perhaps his closest call came on leave in Antwerp with five of his squadron. Gathering in the foyer of their hotel, they were about to cross the road to the cinema when Spurdle realised he had forgotten his cap and asked them to wait while he fetched it from his room. As he returned with his cap a V2 rocket landed outside, killing 567 people and destroying the cinema. In stark contrast to the wretched life of soldiers languishing in trenches, the lot of the officers of the air force was a privileged existence, but the pressure from constant fear had to be released.

"The fighter pilot, living on the razor's edge, just didn't give a damn. He would go up, often several times a day, always against superior numbers, fight, and come back to lie around awaiting the next scramble. But at night, it was off to the pub and oblivion in alcohol or soft arms. I don't think the average pilot could have run a hundred yards without panting or feeling sick."

Whenever Spurdle was pronounced "operationally tired" and stood down, the lure of action compelled him to wangle one posting after another and he remained in action until the end of the war. After 74 Squadron he joined the Merchant Ship Fighter Unit and flew in the first incarnation of an aircraft carrier. The unfortunate Hurricane pilots were flung off the deck of a ship by rocket-propelled sled to engage the enemy, then had to find a place to land. He then returned to the Pacific to fight the Japanese, flying the Kittyhawk aircraft which he described as vastly inferior to the enemy's Zeros.

Returning to Britain he became the flight commander of 80 Squadron, flying high-powered Hawker Tempest aircraft. I remember his regret they didn't get them sooner, such was their superiority in the air.

"Our Tempests arrived! Brand new, shining in the sun! They seemed huge after our dainty Spitfires. But they could go! They cruised at almost 100mp/h faster than the Spits, climbed like rockets and dived at incredible speeds. They were magnificent gun platforms and had no real vices."

Post-war, my grandfather never flew a plane. "Fly? What for? To fly a runty light aircraft chained by authority to follow submitted flight plans? Never! To cut this red tape I'd need a Sabre's power. To hear my lost comrades' voices again, to find the wonder and glory of sunlit spires and the deep caverns of the clouds, I'd need the magic of a Merlin."

As I honour my grandfather among the brave service men and women of our world wars this Anzac Day, I'll give thanks that my sons, like me, may never be called upon to fight for their country, because their great-grandfather did it for them.

Robert Spurdle
Robert Spurdle's life of adventure didn't end when the war was over. Returning to Whanganui, where he was born in 1918, he set about building what was at the time the largest steel-hulled motorised catamaran in New Zealand - in his backyard. When completed, he gathered a crew and set off up through the Pacific to Japan, where he promptly turned around and came home again. He wrote an account of the voyage in his first book, Into the Rising Sun. He ran an engineering business, then became a charter boat operator. He built a second catamaran - the Allez Cat, on which his body was placed when his funeral procession crossed the Whitianga Harbour.(From left): a letter from "Peter" Spurdle to his mother; the Hawker Tempest; wife Shirly and his eldest child; Robert Lawrence "Peter" Spurdle.

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