The last couple of weeks have been mostly damp and dismal and the year ends with another misty and murky afternoon in South Somerset, here are a some pleasing skyscapes from earlier in the month.
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| Some rare afternoon blue sky on December 2. |
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| Contrails in the evening sunset on December 2. |
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| Afternoon sky on December 6 with Storm Barra due the next day. |
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| Late afternoon sky over the Blackdown Hills on December 6. Storm Barra due the next day. |
No leaves on the trees at Snowden Hill on the A30 west of Chard in South Somerset, but lots of starlings.
I took this photo while on an expedition to the farm shop nearby.
The bare branches make an interesting pattern against a very dull, early afternoon, greyish blue sky.
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| Starlings in the trees at Snowdon Hill, near Chard, South Somerset. |
Eighty years ago this week RAF night fighter ace Richard Playne Stevens was killed while on a night fighter intruder sortie. He is buried in the British Cemetery at Bergen Op Zoom in the Netherlands. His wartime career was a remarkable one brought about, it seems, by tragedy.
I reproduce below the entry
in Aces High (Neville Spearman, 1966)
by Christopher Shores and Clive Williams.
“Stevens, from Ditchling, was
a civil pilot before the war, flying 400 hours at night on the newspaper run
between London and Paris. He joined the
RAF after the outbreak of war, aged 32, the maximum age for pilot training, and
was posted as a pilot officer to 151 Squadron at the end of 1940 to fly
Hurricanes at night on intruder missions.
His wife and children were
killed on one of the early night blitzes on Manchester, and from then on he flew
with complete disregard for his own life.
His method was to search the
sky for the greatest concentration of anti-aircraft shell bursts, and fly there
to find the enemy. He pressed his
attacks home so close that on one occasion an exploding bomber covered his
wings with bits of debris and blood, which he refused to have removed. Naturally, rumours about such a pilot were
rife, and it was said by some that he screamed like a man demented whenever he
contacted enemy bombers, but whether or not this was a true statement cannot be
confirmed.
On the 15 January 1941 he
claimed the squadron’s first night victories, destroying a Do 17 and a He
111. He was only the third pilot to
destroy two in one night, and he was awarded a DFC. He then had ear trouble and was unable to fly
for a while.
On 8 April he shot down two
He 111s and two nights later got a Ju 88 and a He 111. He then received a Bar to his DFC.
He destroyed another He 111
on 19 April, and on 7 May got two more.
He claimed another He 111 and a second probably destroyed on 10 May, and
on 13 June destroyed one more. He
damaged one on the 22 June and on 3 July shot down a Ju 88. He got one further victory, and then on 22
October got another Ju 88, his fourteenth and last confirmed claim.
At this time he was the RAF’s
top scoring night fighter, leading all the radar-assisted pilots by a fair
margin, his pre-war night-flying experience and his lack of any consideration
for his own survival accounting for this.
In November he was posted as
a flight commander to 253 Squadron, but it had been considered for some while
that the way he was flying there could only be one end. He received a DSO on 12 December, but three
nights later failed to return from an intruder sortie.”
Flight Lieutenant Richard
Playne Stevens was the son of Sidney Agar Stevens and Isabel Dora Stevens. His late wife was Olive Mabel Stevens of
Barwick, Somerset.
