The Airmen's Stories - F/Lt. C P Green

Group Captain (Flight Lieutenant during the Battle) Paddy Green, the wartime fighter pilot who has died aged 85, expected the highest standards from those under his command; indeed, on one occasion he even reprimanded a junior pilot for failing to shoot him down. Early in 1943, Green was commanding No 600 (City of London), an Auxiliary Air Force squadron of night fighters operating in the North African desert. On one exercise, Flying Officer Rob Sprag, a burly red-headed South African with a robust devil-may-care approach, mistook Green's Bristol Beaufighter for an enemy Ju88. Sprag knew that it was easy, from certain angles in the dark, to confuse a Ju88 with a Beaufighter, but confident that this was a Ju88 he opened fire. Green reacted with great skill and took successful evading action.
When Green fired a coloured recognition signal, Sprag observed that it was not the correct colour and became still more convinced that he was on the tail of a Ju88. He closed in, fired another burst and saw strikes on the target. But when the evading "Ju88" swung across him he was horrified to discover that, beyond all doubt, it was another Beaufighter. Sprag returned to base and reported that he had had a go at "some fool in a Beau" who had not shown the correct identification and had fired the wrong colours of the day, Meanwhile Green, unhurt despite the attack, had already landed his damaged Beaufighter. Extremely tough and known as a no-nonsense squadron commander unlikely to suffer fools gladly, Green regarded almost any mistake as unforgivable incompetence. "You're a bloody bad pilot" he told Sprag as they left the immediate inquiry "You should be ashamed that I'm still able to talk to you. From where you came up behind me you should have destroyed my Beau with your first shot. The wrong identification is forgivable but bad shooting isn't". Nothing further was said about Green's erroneous recognition signal.

A little later, on May 5 1943, while making a dawn patrol, Green correctly identified a Ju88 low over the Gulf of Tunis and proved as good as his words to Sprag. Although his aircraft was hit by return fire he saw the enemy plunge towards the sea, trailing black smoke.

Charles Patrick Green was born in South Africa on March 31 1914, the son of Major Charles Green, who was killed in action in East Africa in 1917. His paternal grandfather was Sir Frederick Green, a prominent member of Lloyds, and one of his grandmothers was Alice Cooper, the philanthropist who dedicated her life to the poor in Australia and after whom Alice Springs was named.

Paddy was sent to Harrow, where he set a record for the 440 yards high hurdles which stood for 40 years. At Cambridge he was an athletics Blue and he also skied for the university. During the Winter Olympics of 1936 he won a bronze medal as a member of the British four-man bobsleigh team. Later he was in the British ski team which competed at Innsbruck, Austria. He was also elected a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society while still an undergraduate.

Green learned to fly in California and in 1937 was commissioned into the Auxiliary Air Force. As a weekend flier he joined No 601 (County of London) Squadron, equipped at Hendon with Hawker Demon biplane fighters.
At the outbreak of war in 1939 he was called to full-time service and posted to No 92 (East India) Squadron flying Bristol Blenheims at Tangmere in Sussex until early May 1940 when the Squadron was re-equipped with Spitfires. In that month Green was helping to cover the evacuation of Dunkirk. On May 20 he had just claimed his first Me109 fighter when he was hit and badly wounded, suffering a compound fracture to his right thigh. Sticking a finger into the cannon shell wound to stop the bleeding he managed to cross the Channel and land safely at Tangmere. Laid up for several weeks, Green returned to operations in time to take part in the closing stages of the Battle of Britain.

Posted at the beginning of October 1940 to command No 421, the "Jim Crow" reconnaissance Flight at Hawkinge on the Kent coast, Green was shot down over Kent on October 12 and suffered further wounds. After baling out he landed amid a number of aggressive young bulls but was rescued by men of a New Zealand artillery battery whose medical officer treated his shrapnel wounds. Green soon returned to operations and followed up the destruction of a Do17 bomber with two probably destroyed Me109’s. When, at New Year 1941, the Flight was expanded to become No 91 Squadron, Green received command. In November 1941, Green joined No 600 Squadron as a flight commander. After flying Beaufighter night fighters from Predannack in Cornwall he received command in June 1942 of No 125, another night Beaufighter squadron.

He was to be seen in ‘The First of the Few’ (1942) the patriotic film about R J Mitchell and the birth of the Spitfire. Perversely, though, he was selected to fly an enemy bomber. On Christmas Day 1942, Green returned to 600, this time taking command at Maison Blanche in Algeria and providing night fighter cover for Allied bases and shipping. Green took the squadron to Malta in June 1943. Operating from there during the invasion of Sicily, he soon increased his score. In July he achieved seven "kills" over three consecutive nights, four of them in one sortie.

Green led 600 to Italy, covered the Salerno landings and supported the Allied northward advance. He was promoted group captain early in 1944 and posted to Italy to command 1 Mobile Operations Unit of the Desert Air Force. That November he moved to command a tactical wing of Douglas Boston bombers.

At the end of the war Green returned home to help with the development of jet fighter tactics at the Central Fighter Establishment. Altogether, he had been credited with 11 confirmed kills though his final score may have been as high as 15.

After being released from the service in 1947, Green returned to his native South Africa with his wife Ruth (nee Webster), a Canadian nurse whom he had met in Italy and married in 1946. He was appointed a director of a subsidiary of the Anglo-American Mining and Trading Corporation, for which he worked until 1977 when he retired to his wife's family farm south-west of Collingwood, Ontario.

Green was awarded a DFC in 1941, a DSO in 1943 and the Air Efficiency Award in 1944. He was mentioned in despatches in 1946. He was awarded the US DFC and the Soviet Order of Patriotic War.

His wife died in 1981; they had a son and two daughters.

With acknowledgments to the Daily Telegraph May 1999