WWII 1944 - 1945 (6)

The 8th Army broke through in the Liri Valley on 12th May at last breaking the almost impregnable Gustav line. The Germans took to Highway 6 leading to Rome and it was on this road that they suffered from the devastating attacks of the fighter bombers. As soon as the Germans started to move, tactical reconnaissance figured more prominently in the Squadron’s flying. At the end of the month the Squadron moved to Venafro where it continued to maintain its high intensity of operations flying on average ten missions per day involving twenty sorties. The groundcrew worked wonders to keep the aircraft serviceable under these conditions and often worked until all hours to do so.


Throughout June the Squadron made four more moves first to Aquino next to Osa then Falerium and finally Orvieto. Each move was in the right direction and was prompted by the need to keep up with the rapidly advancing Allied Armies. These moves were great morale-raisers to the ground personnel who were able to see the results of bombing by the wayside, targets in all probability given by the Squadron pilots. It was during one of these moves that an unfortunate accident occurred which nevertheless demonstrated the strength and efficiency of the Spitfire cockpit. Pilot Officer Groom had the bad luck to hit his wheels rather heavily when landing at Osa from Aquino. The strip at Osa was the worst encountered to date having a poor surface, crossed at intervals by drainage ditches filled with flint stones. Not only this but the strip was traversed diagonally along all of its length by a narrow gauge railway. The result of Pilot Officer Groom’s heavy landing was that the port oleo was buckled and the undercarriage would not fully retract. He was therefore instructed to belly land in a field near the runway but in so doing he struck a wall and overturned. The impact and subsequent gyrations broke the back of the aircraft and wrapped one wing around the other. The pilot was extricated from the burning debris somewhat dazed and suffering from severe lacerations above and below his right eye, a simple fracture of the right malar and minor injuries to both legs. He was back on the Squadron three weeks later though he remained off flying for a while as his right eye had not healed up.


While the Squadron was at Osa, only eight miles from Rome, it was felt by all members that a visit to the capital was too good an opportunity to miss despite the fact that the town was out of bounds. This problem was overcome in a typically British ‘tongue-in-cheek” fashion by getting lost. As one of the members of such a sortie said afterwards “Today, a 3-tonner returning from

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