The Airmen's Stories - Wg/Cdr. H S Darley

Group Captain (Wing Commander during the Battle) George Darley, who has died aged 86, won the first DSO of the Battle of Britain after shooting down a string of enemy aircraft.

Although officially credited with destroying three enemy fighters, Darley's true score was almost certainly much higher. His inspiring leadership of No 609 squadron resulted in 85 victories between June and October 1940, with the loss of seven pilots. As a young squadron leader Darley had noticed the deficiency of Fighter Command's rules of combat.

They thought that all the fighter had to do was to get behind a bomber and go bang-bang--bang...... he recalled .....they forgot to tell us that there might be enemy fighters above and their bombers had rear-gunners

After devising his own tactics Darley achieved notable results with his mixed bag of pre-war weekend fliers of No 609, an Auxiliary Air Force Spitfire squadron. He took charge of 609 on June 28 1940. Though just 26, as a regular officer he was vastly more experienced than the part-time lawyers and bankers under his command, and he set about raising their stan-dards with individual tuition. He taught them the art of deflection shooting on a curving attack, to avoid the fire of bomber rear-gunners, and to aim at the "front office" where the pilot was. Darley reversed the accepted order of take-off by placing himself last. He deployed his Spitfires in sections of three in loose line astern with a fourth section behind and above.

The day of August 13 1940 was among 609's most successful. "We were sent off from Warmwell because a big raid was coming in" Darley recalled

Sure enough there was a gaggle of 40 or 50 Ju87’s (Stuka dive-bombers) with Me109 fighters above. I attacked from down sun. I don't think the 109’s ever saw us. We shot 10 bombers down while they were still in formation and bagged three 109’s too.

Short, pugnacious and known in the squadron as "the little dynamo" Darley cared little for red tape. When a stuffy station commander barred meals outside set hours Darley rose at 3 am, got the kitchen going and served eggs and bacon for pilots on dawn patrol.

Horace Stanley Darley, always known as George, was born in London on November 3 1913, and educated at Emanuel School, Wandsworth Common, where he excelled at rugby, rowing, swimming, fives and shooting at Bisley. He traced his ancestry to the de Derle family, which bred horses for the cavalry of William the Conqueror.

After obtaining Certificate A in the Officers' Training Corps, Darley was commissioned into the RAF in 1932. The next year he was posted to No 207, a bomber squadron with Fairey Gordon biplanes at Bircham Newton in Norfolk. In 1935 he joined No 8, a Fairey 111F Squadron in Aden soon re-equipped - to Darley's relief - with the Vickers Vincent biplane bomber, a more reliable aircraft for patrolling the rugged terrain. When Italian troops occupied Abyssinia, Darley was detached to Somaliland to assist Camel Corps border patrols. He recalled:

We spent nights at unguarded RAF strips, sleeping on camp beds under our wings, pulling mosquito nets around us and hoping to keep roaming lions at bay. All good Boy Scout stuff!

Darley returned home at the end of 1936, qualified as an instructor, and served successively as adjutant and instructor with Nos 602 (City of Glasgow) and 611 West Lancashire Auxiliary Air Force squadrons. At the outbreak of war, Darley was a fighter operations controller at Debden, Essex, moving in April 1940 to a similar post at Merville in France with No 63 Wing of the Air Component of the British Expeditionary Force. Evacuated after the fall of France, he flew three sorties with the Spitfires of No 65 Squadron, based at Hornchurch, Essex, before taking command of No 609, defending London at Northolt.

After the Battle of Britain Darley, not yet 27, was promoted wing commander to take charge of the fighter station at Exeter. In May 1941 he was posted to Air HQ, Far East, in Singapore, with the brief of creating an air defence system for Singapore, Malaya, Burma and Hong Kong as well as liaising with the Americans in the Philippines and the Dutch in Java. He was returning from a Burma inspection aboard an Imperial Airways flying boat on December 8 when the captain announced that Japan had invaded Thailand.

Unable to refuel at Bangkok, the flying-boat returned to Rangoon where Darley and his passengers transferred to a longer range flying boat bound for Singapore. They arrived there as Japanese aircraft were sinking the battleship Prince of Wales and the battle cruiser Repulse off Kuantan, Malaya.

On January 7 1942, Darley organised an RAF withdrawal from Kuala Lumpur, Malaya to Singapore in the face of the advancing Japanese. After arranging destruction of the airfield he attached an explosive booby trap to the chain of his office lavatory. When the withdrawal from Singapore began on January 27, Darley established a fighter operations centre at Palembang on Sumatra and organised Hurricane sorties until Palembang became indefensible. After surviving a road ambush Darley boarded a merchant ship, which though ordered to Australia, altered course to India at the whim of her master who explained that he and his crew had been away from their home port of Glasgow for far too long.
In mid-March, the master put Darley ashore from where he was posted to command No 151 Operational Training Unit at Risalpur on the North West Frontier. The next year he was appointed Wing Commander Operations at No 221 Group responsible from Calcutta for fighter bomber activities over Burma in defending India. In June 1943, Darley returned to Risalpur as a group captain.

Darley returned home in the summer of 1944 to command No 62 OTU near Newcastle. The next year he was posted to command RAF Cranfield and afterwards to the new RAF staff college at Bracknell. There followed appointments as Senior Air Staff Officer (SASO) 12 Group Fighter Command and station commander at Wittering. Here he improved the food by unofficially serving vegetable grown by German PoW’s.

In 1948, after briefly commanding West Malling in Kent, Darley was seconded for two years to the Indian Air Force to establish a staff college. He returned to West Malling to supervise the transition of four fighter squadrons to Vampire and Meteor jets. In 1952 Darley was appointed director of overseas operations at the Air Ministry. He was busily involved in security measures and overseas visits to combat Mau Mau troubles in Kenya and Communist terrorism in Malaya. In 1954 he was appointed commander No 4 Flying Training School, returning to what he regarded as "the best job in the RAF: supervising the tuition of men into competent combat pilots".

Finally, he was posted to Singapore as chief intelligence officer in the Far East Air Force returning in 1956 to be employed as a retired officer in intelligence in Whitehall.

He married, in 1939, Marjorie who died in 1988. They had a son.

With acknowledgments to the Daily Telegraph