20,39. There is no hiding in the dark.
Several times during the daylight battles the King, amongst other VIPs, had visited Fighter Command HQ at Stanmore, one of the other HQs or an airfield but the request from the Royal Household to visit an operational GCI/PPI station at night had come somewhat as a surprise and caused not a little consternation amongst Sir Hugh Dowding’s Staff. After a little bit of to and from, the staff at Bentley Priory had arranged for the Royal Party to visit the GCI station at Sopley in Hampshire. This location had been chosen for a number of reasons, it was close enough to London and Windsor to be easily accessible but far enough away that it was unlikely to be caught in a major raid. It was very close to the Bournemouth/London railway so the Royal train could be used as an overnight base for the King and Queen and lastly but by no means least, Sopley had the record of being the most successful of all the GCI stations with almost double the number of intercepts, so therefore statistically it was the best station to choose from the point of the King actually witnessing an interception.
Having decided the where, the AM and Fighter Command had now to decide the when, the word from the Royal Household had been that it should be as soon as was practical and involve as few Brass Hats as possible and cause no disruption to the normal operation of the station. So it was that on the night of the XX of September the King and Queen were quietly ushered into the PPI and plotting room, where they were shown how the PPI screen showed the position and range of the target which could be passed directly to the intercepting pilot and plotted on the station’s map board, so that the control staff could track the enemy and it’s position relative to adjacent stations and other contacts. For the King’s visit the personnel at Sopley had been thoroughly briefed, one important aspect of his visit was that he was there in his capacity as a senior officer of the RAF and not as the King. So if he addressed any of the personnel they would respond with a curt “Sir” rather than “Your Majesty”.
So that the King could observe the operating procedure he was provided with a seat in front of the large Perspex grid reference map upon which the duty fighter plotter was marking and recording the plots and tracks of the various RDF returns. From these plots the duty fighter plotter would pass the course and speed of the plots to the duty controller. The Duty Controller would then use this information to direct the night fighter towards a hostile contact. So as to allow the duty fighter plotter to concentrate on the task in hand the King, who was sitting to his left, was separated from him by a curtain.
This carefully orchestrated demonstration was interrupted when as the duty plotter was concentrating on passing accurate courses and speed on a potential target to the controller, the curtain was whisked back by the King, who enquired in his guttural low voice ‘’and what are you doing?” completely unnerved by the unexpected interruption the duty fighter plotter forgot his prior instructions and leaped to his feet, sending his chino graph crayon flying to the floor, stood to attention and stated loudly “plotting, Your Majesty”. With nary a pause the King bent down, picked up the errant chino graph crayon and place it back on the ledge on the edge of the plotting table with the words “Oh are you” upon which both men sat down and the chase continued as if nothing had happened, which was fortuitous. The enemy aircraft had approached Sopley from the north and as the King now quietly observed an RAF night fighter was calmly and carefully coxed into a position below and behind the enemy aircraft. There was a brief flutter of excitement in the room as the night fighter reported gaining an RDF contact and the hushed silence as the two plots came ever closer to each other as they came ever closer to Sopley. Final the night fighter pilot radioed that he had visual contact and confirmed it as a ‘Hostile’ and was about to engage. At this juncture the senior RAF officer escorting the King and Queen discreetly invited then to step out side as there might be something to see. As they cleared the blackout curtain the party was directed to look towards the north. Hardly had these words been spoken when distinct streams of flashing lights were seen in high in the sky followed shortly by the sound of distant cannon fire. Seconds later a glow appeared which grew into visible flames that descended at an ever decreasing angle and increasing speed until disappearing into the darkness of the horizon. The door of the Control room opened and a measured voice announced, “pilot reports target destroyed, Sir’
The German aircraft crashed close to the town of Ringwood on the edge of the New Forest some six miles north of Sopley.
On their return journey to the Royal Train the King had turned to his Aide de Camp and remarked that “it had been quite a ‘Command Performance’ and that He would personally endorse the awarding of a DFC to the night fighter pilot, who he understood to be one of the service’s leading aces”. The King added that if RAF Command could arrange It, he would like to visit the night fighter squadron in question and carry out the investiture himself at that time.
After a quick flurry of activity between the RAF and the AM, arrangements were duly made, Dowding as an Equerry to the King and the Commanding officer of the proposed recipient of the medal had a couple of salient observations of which he advised the King. One was that the Reaper night fighter aircraft had a crew of two, the pilot and the RDF operator and the success of the pilot was wholly tied to the skill and competence of the RDF operator flying with him. In the case of Flight lieutenant Cunningham his RDF operator was a Sargent, Cecil Frederick Rawnsley but known as ‘Jimmy’ and as a Sargent could not be awarded the DFC. The non-commissioned equivalent award was the Distinguished Flying Medal (DFM) and Sir Hugh Dowding suggested that it would be appropriate in this case to awarded both members of the air crew. That then lead onto Sir Hugh’s second observation and that was that the awarding of a medal to the RDF operator in a night fighter-had all sorts of security and operational implications. The very existence of airborne RDF and its use in fighter aircraft was a very sensitive security matter and the attention drawn to it by an investiture which included the reading of the citations for the medals awarded would be problematical. Sir Phillip and others working with both the Royal Household and Sir Hugh Dowding as the Commanding officer of Fighter Command came up with a workable solution.
Whilst Cunningham’s award of the DFC would be duly Gazzeted, under the Official Secrets Act the award of the DFM to Sargent Rawnsley would not be published.
A couple of weeks later the King paid a visit to the Worthy Down air base where all the squadron personnel both commissioned and non-commissioned were presented to him. Then in the full glare of the Newsreels and print media Cunningham was with full pomp and ceremony duly decorated with the DFC. An hour later in a closed hanger, a second ceremony was held where Sargent ‘Jimmy’ Rawnsley was decorated with the DFM by the King, a nice touch was that the actual citation was read out to the assembled company by the newly decorated pilot John ‘Cats-Eyes’ Cunningham.
Forever afterwards there was a friendly rivalry over whether the Sergeants Mess or the Officer’s mess threw the best celebration party.
Both men had the distinction of being the first RDF night fighter crew to be decorated for their actions.