Past Talks : April 2025

“Rover David – and how the Desert Air Force gave Hitler his Dunkirk moment”, by Vic Flintham, CRAeS

When our speaker Vic Flintham asked “What did you do in World War 2 uncle?”, Uncle replied “I was in the Army as an artillery spotter, part of the ‘Rover David’ system”. That reply tells you everything, but leaves a lot of questions unanswered. Artillery spotting, how? Rover David, what? Etc., etc..

Finding the answers and painting the whole picture has not been at all straightforward or by any means readily available and accessible. It has taken Vic Flintham a long time and led him to dig deep into archives and internet search resources, the outcome of which was the publication of yet another book under his name. This time it was ‘Close Call, RAF Close Air Support in the Mediterranean”, the subject of tonight’s talk.

Since man took to the air, tethered balloons had been used for artillery spotting. With the coming of WW1, aircraft artillery spotting soon found its place, followed-up by spontaneous ground strafing attacks being made by the pilots on the way back to base. By 1917-1918, properly co-ordinated air support operations were being planned and executed.

By the time WW2 arrived inter-service rivalry had established itself once again and the benefits of rapid response had fallen by the wayside. In France in 1940 Lysanders and Hurricanes formed part of the BEF (British Expeditionary Force) Air Component, which itself was within the “Allied Central Air Bureau”. At that time, if an operation combining Army and RAF resources was required, permission had to be sought from the respective Ministries in England. The answer could take 36 hours to arrive, by which time the requirement had probably changed significantly. During the Dunkirk evacuation the only CAS was provided by FAA Skuas and Albacores, which attacked German forces to help keep the Army out of trouble as much as possible.

From 1940 to 1942 more effective CAS was developing in North Africa and trials were also taking place in India, but in neither case were the trials followed up.

The first effective CAS took place in Ethiopia, where an OP (Observation Post) was established at the front line and a RAF ‘commander’ was incorporated as a part of the OP team. A Cab Rank was set up using three Hawker Harts to call upon and it all worked well – but it was an expensive and time-consuming effort.

CAS (Close Air Support) was still a fledgling tactic and in September 1941, even Winston Churchill issued a diktat to the effect that the Army should not expect support by the RAF.

However, by 1941-1943 Air Marshall Sir Arthur (‘Mary’) Coningham was established as commander of the Western Desert Air Force and he is credited with the development of the forward air control groups, directing close air support (CAS). Resulting success demanded 1/. Air Superiority, (or better still, Air Supremacy); 2/. Interdiction; then 3/. Air attack and ground assault. Air superiority was the essential element.

Following the German forces retreat after the Battle of El Alamein, the Axis Forces established a strongpoint using the 1930s French built Mareth Line to ‘dig-in’, in force, in North Africa. On one edge of the Mareth Line was the sea and on the other side were the Matmata Hills. The Battle of Mareth and how it was won by Montgomery’s 8th Army is a subject in itself, but from the CAS perspective, Air Vice Marshall Harry Broadhurst set up an air support cab rank system, by putting a RAF liaison officer with the artillery. When a German obstacle was encountered, an air support battering was immediate, using both fighters and light bombers. In two hours 417 sorties were flown. It was a one-off enterprise, but the system worked. The downside was that Broadhurst sought approval from his boss, Air Marshall Coningham, it was not forthcoming, but Broadhurst went ahead nevertheless and the success was undeniable.

Shortly after this, the 8th Army was on the move again – homeward bound they thought. Wrong, instead in November 1943 they were sent to Italy to do battle against three German Divisions, which became known as the Battle of Sangro River. This battle is also notable for being on record as the original ‘Rover David’ operation.

Rover David was a control and command system named after the call-sign used by ground controllers. The ground controllers generally comprised a combat experienced pilot plus an army officer in a forward observation position, overlooking the front line itself. The Cab-Rank overhead was based upon formations of fighter-bombers (e.g. Spitfire Mk IX) and when the infantry encountered resistance requiring air support, the request was passed to the fighter control centre who contacted the designated aircraft. The air controller identified and pin-pointed the target, upon which the Spitfires dropped their 500lb bombs, quite often no more than a few hundred yards ahead of the Allied infantry. Having dropped their bombs, the aircraft quickly zoomed back to strafe enemy groups, vehicles and gun emplacements at the location.

A notable pilot in these operations was Geoff Haysom, DSO, DFC, who was posted as Wing Leader of 239 Wing. He was obviously a man of some influence, because he had access to the highly secret Ultra information. As an aside, he married in 1944 and it was only 40 years later that he discovered that his wife also had access to Ultra in her war work. Our speaker, Vic Flintham, also remarked that in his researches, the operational reports written by Geoff Haysom were the best that Vic had ever read.

A typical Rover David sequence was as follows: When a battle was intended and Rover David was to feature, each person participating in Rover David – artillery, pilots, staff officers, etc. – was given identical photographs of the next battle area, the plan to be implemented, the Cab Ranks (usually three flights of six aircraft) and how they were to be allocated. A standby, reserve target was also nominated. If the first Cab Rank was not called down to provide aerial support within 20 minutes, it flew off to bomb and attack the standby target. Meanwhile, the second Cab Rank flight took over the primary Rover David role overhead for 20 minutes, after which the third flight took over, etc..

The photographs distributed were Merton Obliques, which required a particular, standardised photographic technique. These was overlaid with a grid that enabled very precise target pin-pointing. Literally millions of these photographs were distributed, yet Vic has been able to find just one remaining authentic example.

The FAA provided CAS cover in North Africa, Salerno and the South of France, using  Seafires. Sadly of the 144 Seafires that operated, only 18 survived accidents and incidents due to the aircraft carriers being stationary at anchor, hence no head-wind over the deck.

Another successful element of CAS was the AOPs (Air Observation Posts) pioneered by Captain Charles Bazeley, Royal Artillery. The AOPs were very independent, consisted of four flights of Auster light aircraft, comprising six pilots and four aircraft each. All the pilots were Army – on the logical basis that it was easier to teach a gunner to fly than to teach a RAF pilot gunnery. The AOP Auster pilots principal function was to direct artillery onto enemy positions, however on occasion they could observe the urgent need for air support and would relay the message and coordinates to the ground control who would call down the Cab Rank flights. American CAS groups used the same radio frequencies as their AOP aircraft, who could call down a Cab Rank themselves. However, British forces deliberately kept the radio frequencies apart to avoid conflict of priorities.

Allied air superiority in the later war years enabled CAS to remain a very effective and precise weapon. Typical figures showed over 3,600 allied aircraft against 185 German aircraft. However, against that, the German forces had extensive and powerful artillery.

For those of you that would like to dig deeper into Rover David, the Battle of Argenta, or Operation Buckland, which took place in April 1945, is a good example of how the British Army used CAS to good effect to bypass a series of river defence obstacles and break out into the Italian Po Plains. It was this battle that caused the retreating Germans their ‘Dunkirk’ moment, because they had no means whatever for crossing the River Po and abandoned vehicles and weapons were nose-to-tail all along the river bank.

As so often happens, CAS techniques were refined with experience and perfected by the war’s end, to the extent that bridges were routinely destroyed by aircraft.

After the war, everything was forgotten. In the Korean war and the later Vietnam war, bridge destruction from the air mostly failed. Likewise, the RAF had no doctrine, so everything had to be re-learned in recent years and recent wars.

Thank you Vic Flintham for a detailed and fascinating insight into the mysteries of Rover David.