The Airmen's Stories - F/Lt. A C Deere

Air Commodore (Flight Lieutenant during the Battle) Al Deere, the New Zealand fighter ace who has died aged 77, was credited with shooting down 12 enemy aircraft during the Battle of Britain; he ended the Second World War with a slate of 22 confirmed kills, 10 probables and 18 enemy aircraft damaged.

Square-jawed and handsome, Deere was the epitome of the dashing RAF pilot. He was uncannily well-starred and cheated death on nine occasions when his Spitfire was shot down or forced to land. He ascribed his "nine lives" to his high standard of training and his fitness - he was a keen rugby player and boxed for the RAF.

Deere made his mark on the morning of May 23 1940, during the fall of France. While escorting a Miles Master to Calais to rescue the leader of 74 Squadron, who had been forced down, Deere shot down two Me109 fighters. It was the beginning of an astonishing run. That afternoon Deere bagged another Me109 over Dunkirk, and the next day he shot down a Me110 twin-engined fighter. The day after that he shot down two further Me110’s. But within hours he used up the first of his nine lives when return fire from a Dornier 17 bomber off the Belgian coast forced his Spitfire down on a beach.
Deere crash-landed and was knocked unconscious when his head struck the windscreen. His Spitfire caught fire but he came round in the nick of time and escaped. A soldier helped him to dress his wound. He found a bicycle and headed for Ostend and then hitched a lift to Dunkirk with three British soldiers in a truck. He recalled:

I got a lift on a destroyer to Dover, caught a train to London and took the Underground to Hornchurch where I rejoined the squadron just 19 hours after taking off.

On July 9, after destroying a Me109, he collided with another and crashed into a cornfield. Six days later, after fighting several furious actions, he was obliged to bale out at low level. He fractured a wrist but spent only one night in hospital before returning to his squadron. To his chagrin he was then shot down by another Spitfire. Shortly afterwards he was bombed when taking off at Hornchurch. His aircraft tipped over and he was left suspended in his harness.

By the middle of August 1940 Deere's squadron was desperately short of pilots. The replacements had no combat experience and only a few hours of training in a Hurricane or a Spitfire. The next month the squadron was so depleted that it was rested in the North. Deere's luck persisted. He was putting a young sergeant pilot through his final combat test when the new boy flew into his tailplane. Deere's Spitfire whipped into a spiral and plummeted towards the ground; the g forces prevented him from baling out. Twisting, turning and kicking he crawled out of the cockpit, but was then blown back and caught on the stump of the tail. Not until the ground was uncomfortably close did his parachute open, and then only partly. He made a soft and smelly landing in the cesspool of a farm.

The constant threat of death made Deere's sense of humour all the more precious. Once, when Deere was returning from France, a pilot named Darling called up: "Are you all right, Deere?"
"Yes, Darling," replied Deere.

Of Irish stock, Alan Christopher Deere was born in Auckland, New Zealand, on December 12th 1917 and educated at St Carrie's School, Wanganui. He had six brothers, five of whom served in and survived the war; two were PoW’s. Deere worked briefly as a shepherd and then as a clerk with Treadwell, Gordon, Treadwell & Haggitt, solicitors at Wanganui. But after a 10 shilling flip in an aircraft he was sold on flying.

Deere's chance came when the RAF advertised in New Zealand for pilots. In 1937 he sailed for London, received a short service commission, and after training joined 54 Squadron at Hornchurch in 1938. The next year the squadron received Spitfires. On one of his early flights Deere was overcome by anoxia while in the air, and lost consciousness. The fighter dived towards the sea and he came to just in time to pull out.

At the beginning of 1941 he had a spell as operations room controller at Catterick before joining 602 Squadron as a flight commander at Ayr in May. On his first "scramble" with 602 Deere was ordered to investigate an aircraft flying west towards Glasgow, Plots on the aircraft were intermittent and not very reliable. Deere subsequently discovered that it was in fact the Me110 from which Rudolf Hess, deputy to Adolf Hitler, baled out over Scotland. Deere cursed his luck.

An Me 110 unescorted was a wonderful target - with Hess aboard it was probably the prize fighter-pilot target of the war.

Shortly afterwards Deere used up another "life" when his engine seized and he crash-landed on the cliff-top at the Heads of Ayr. Deere received command of No 602 in August and on the day of his appointment destroyed a Me109 over Gravelines. In early 1942 he was posted to the United States to lecture on fighter tactics and when he returned to opera-tions in May he received command of No 403, a Canadian Spitfire squadron. After staff duties with 13 Group, Deere completed a Staff College course and then had a short spell with 611 Squadron. In 1943 he was appointed leader of the Biggin Hill Wing. After commanding the Fighter Wing of the Central Gunnery School, Deere joined the staff of 11 Group and was then given command of 145 (French) Airfield at Merston. He led the wing over the D-Day Normandy invasion bridgehead on June 6th 1944.

Later that month he moved with the wing to France but soon left to become Wing Commander Plans at 84 Group. In July 1945 he returned to Biggin Hill as station commander and in August, after receiving a permanent commission, took over the Polish Mustang wing. When that was disbanded he became station commander at Duxford. Deere became assistant commandant at the RAF Staff College, Cranwell, in 1963. The next year he commanded the East Anglian Sector before joining Technical Training Command. He retired in 1967.

Passing up a better-paid job with the American aircraft company Fairchild, Deere spent the next 10 years as the RAF civilian director of sport.

In 1959 he published ‘Nine Lives’.

Deere was awarded the DFC and Bar in 1940, DSO in 1943, American DFC in 1944 and the Croix de Guerre in 1944. He was appointed OBE in 1946 and from 1961 to 1964 was ADC to the Queen.

He married, in 1945, Joan Fenton; they had a son and a daughter.