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A windsock fluttered hopelessly in the breeze. Half a dozen French fighter planes stood around apparently just where they had landed on being flown into Gibraltar by French air force pilots when their country had capitulated to the Germans in 1940. These fighter planes were now half buried in sand and dust and were obviously never likely to fly again. Already six of our own ZS Hudson’s had arrived and having survived the landing were now waiting expectantly to be serviced for the first of the many very hazardous operations that were to be undertaken. It was to be hoped that good fortune would continue to smile on the many takeoffs and landings these Hudson’s would be making in the next few weeks they were obviously going to need a lot of luck.
The north face of the "Rock", 1400 feet high, overshadows everything and jutting out from its base, as if to mirror the rock face itself, was a large cemetery which had actually been rolled back slightly to make enough room for the strip of land that was to suffice as a runway from which our Hudson’s would operate.
Some attempt at laying a hard surface had been made but it was still very lose and uneven. It was probably quite useful as a place for Swordfish to use but if one considers that the minimum flying speed of a Hudson was almost the top speed of a Swordfish it can be seen the sort of problems our pilots were about to endure.
Down at the Mediterranean end of the piece of land, in the corner formed by the border fence and the sea, could also be seen the two or three Swordfish that had managed to land here when the Ark Royal had been sunk. Within a week or two of our arrival at North Front these swordfish just seemed to disappear I think someone must have quietly told them not to get in the way.

I remember on one occasion there was a lot of arguments about letting them use the refuelling bowser and shortly after that they had gone.
We looked the place over for the usual amenities associated with being members of His Majesty’s Royal Air Force but found them to be very sparse and indeed the accommodation provided was to prove to be the worst ever. A very old building consisting of one large middle compartment with other separate rooms built around and obviously was some sort of cattle shed was to be used by all ground personnel as' sleeping quarters. The middle room being the largest had been cleared out and. furnished with two tier wooden bunks that made the place look more like a concentration camp than accommodation for airmen.
However, making the best of a poor do as usual, we collected our large kit bags from the Hudson aircraft that had arrived and moved in to be the first ever residents of North Front, Gibraltar.
An old wooden shed away from the sleeping quarters was to be used for the provision of food and this seemed to be staffed by people we hardly ever saw we just went to this shed at meal times and helped ourselves to whatever food had been put there.

After having sorted out those two very important details we then turned our minds to the task for which we had been brought here, namely to prepare the Hudson aircraft for the battle that was about to commence.
To call it a battle may seem strange but of course that is what it really was. In the harbour a homeward bound convoy was now gathering and would be ready to sail on the 14th. December 1941 thirty-two ships in all. Beyond the harbour and all the way to England "U" Boats were now taking up their various positions and would be ready to move in and pounce on an easy prey, a convoy as far as they then knew, without air cover. The Ark Royal had been removed on November 11th and any idea that such aircraft as Hudson’s could possibly operate from Gibraltar was of course completely out of the question. The mistake made by the "U" Boat commanders in assuming that air cover would be nonexistent when in fact they were to find the convoy had air cover more ruthless than they had ever known was no doubt one of the most important ingredients that would bring the immediate operations to a very successful conclusion. The surprise of suddenly finding an aircraft coming in at you at anything up to 300m.p.h. with a capability of dropping four 250 pound depth charges right in your line of dive had proved pretty nerve racking for many "u" boats crews before but out here in waters that had never before seen such aircraft the surprise factor was even greater. To add to the surprise was the latest innovation of having two cannons fitted in the nose compartment of some of our Hudson’s to deal with the odd character that would remain surfaced when attacked so as to be able to use the deck guns.
From the word Go our aircrews never let up until the bulk of that convoy had arrived safely home and the message quickly caught on amongst the ground crews that' if men willingly volunteered for such hazardous flying duties they just had to be dedicated with that result that all became infused with the same spirit working even harder for the' desired end result.
Initially it was a battle between our Hudson aircraft and the “u” Boats to prevent our convoy from being wiped out but it was a battle we could not afford to lose. In importance it must have been second only to the Battle of Britain because had that convoy have been lost then ultimately Gibraltar itself would have also been lost and that would have proved disastrous.

Even to have to admit that Gibraltar was even threatened at that time could have meant the scales being tipped in favour of the Germans getting Spanish collaboration with all the inherent dangers that would have meant Without Gibraltar there would have been no Alamein no North African campaign, Malta would have become completely lost to us, and with the possibility of the British people reluctant to even continue at war. If there was any point during the last war at which time it could have been said that the war could have been won or lost by either side then I believe that must be the time. So much had been lost to the British at that point in time Gibraltar could have been the final blow.
How wise had been our high commands decision to change its priorities on hearing that the Ark Royal had been sunk and to dispatch post-haste this very formidable detachment of highly professional "U" Boat killers. How fortunate also that the right men were available to carry through such a task and without doubt the only men in the whole world with the necessary qualifications.
What this small band of airmen accomplished in the first ever flying operations from Gibraltar should never be under: estimated, and although the facts are there for all to see this very important episode has never received the recognition it so rightly deserves.

It was obvious to us right from the start of operations that there were two very severe limitations to the job in hand. The first one was to do with the length of the run for take off and landings. I should estimate that the length available was something like one third to one quarter of what we were normally used to. Starting from the Mediterranean end breakwater and finishing at the main road that ran through the border post into La Linea. To this meant that on take off it was just possible to attain the flying speed of a Hudson of 90 to 100 m.p.h. providing everything went according to plan leaving no margin whatever for a slight flying error or any mechanical failure. The landing back on could be even more tricky bearing in mind that a pilot had just completed an eight to ten hour patrol to have to juggle back on to this postage stamp size of a landing place needed all the nerve and skill they could muster. It was a fairly hair raising experience at times to just stand and watch.
The second major problem that had to be overcome was the one of refuelling the aircraft, which at times almost beat us on sheer physical grounds alone.
The process of refuelling must have been the oversight of the war because here we were with aircraft that required anything up to three thousand gallons of 100 octane a time and to do' the job brought into Use the only pieces of equipment that were available to us at North Front, namely, one very old petrol bowser of about 900 gallons capacity and one old Fordson tractor with which to pull it about. The fuel dump had been created at the west end of this square piece of land and was hidden by some trees and; high bushes that grew alongside of the road into La Linea thus forming a corner on meeting the border fence that stretched from the Mediterranean end through the border post to Algeciras Bay. The dump consisted of many hundreds of four gallon sealed tins of 100-octane petrol and these were stacked all around and quite high with an entrance and enough room left in the middle so as to be able to manoeuvre the tractor and bowser into position.

Now a Hudson had a one thousand gallon tank in each wing, which meant the bowser had to be filled twice to refuel one plane and we had anything up to ten planes a day to refuel. After the bowser had been manoeuvred into the middle of the dump with as many hands as could be spared bearing in mind that there was only just over thirty of us all told and all the other maintenance work that needed doing, we would then start up the Petters single cylinder donkey engine and believe me Petters single cylinder donkey engines could be real bitches when they liked. Assuming it started then this in turn drove the suction pump that sucked the petrol from an open fifty-gallon drum as it was filled. To fill the drum each four-gallon sealed tin had first to be split open at one corner with an axe. To fill the bowser about two hundred and fifty tins had to be split open then the bowser had to be taken out and emptied into one wing tank of an aircraft, then brought back into the middle of the dump to be filled again and then taken out to the aircraft to fill the second wing tank.

At first in the thirteen days leading up to the sailing of the convoy constant sweeps were kept up over the area of sea in the path to be taken and for this full wing tanks gave an adequate range but when the convoy had sailed and as the days turned into weeks it became necessary in order to give proper air cover, to fit Belly and Fuselage tanks which added almost another thousand gallons more making in all seven hundred and fifty of the sealed four gallon tins to be split open with axes, tipped into the fifty gallon open drum, sucked into the bowser and then to be taken and pumped with that same poor old bowser into the tanks of just one aircraft.
With so much effort required just for refuelling our Hudson's by the time all the other maintenance work had been carried out as well, we did little else but work and sleep in those early days at North Front.
We tried to refuel according to the book at first which meant under those circumstances filtering all fuel that was put in the bowser and again as it was put in the aircraft but this proved so much of a hindrance that it just had to be abandoned. In the name of expediency, this in turn only added to the already hazardous nature of the flying program our aircrew were then undertaking.
How we managed to get through all that refuelling without setting fire to the petrol dump. And ourselves I will never know, what with all those axes chopping away and the Petters donkey engine doing a back fire now and again we must have been just very lucky as no fire precautions were ever taken.

In fact the whole question of servicing such modern aircraft as Hudson's with all the sophisticated equipment they had on board was to prove a nightmare in the weeks to come because of the lack of every basic requirement to do such a job at North Front.
The aircraft that had been brought out to Gibraltar were of course the best there was within 233 Squadron all fully serviced and ready to go but as December wore on the toll in aircraft began to tell. If an engine became wrecked or an undercarriage was busted due to the sort of treatment it was receiving during landing there was very little we could do about it there being no facilities for doing major repairs. It just meant a heavier load would be put on the planes that were left but it was obvious that to keep up the number of flying hours that were flown during the time of the convoy would not be possible for a much longer period unless a lot of changes were made at North Front.

The fact that we were able to successfully maintain and to keep in one hundred per cent serviceable condition enough of those Hudson aircraft for the very critical period from the beginning of December 1941 until the convoy had made home waters on the 27th is a feat to marvel at.
The lack of spares was very evident and what we had consisted mainly of such things as electrical fuses and engine ignition plugs. Magneto contact points were so short in supply that we had to clean up the used ones and refit them something we would not have tolerated doing before.
All starting was done on the internal batteries, as no portable external starting batteries were available.

The luxuries of any thing like workshop facilities were nonexistent which meant that all work was carried out wherever the aircraft had come to rest.
The expectations of a visit from the German air force was something else we believed would happen at any moment but strange as it may seem the Germans made no attempt to interfere with us. It would have taken only a very small bomber force to have stopped us as anti-aircraft protection was non existent at North Front, or as far as could be seen, anywhere else on the Rock.
The apathy being displayed at Gibraltar at the end of 1941 was just amazing. The only war like things in the place seemed to be our Hudson's and they were fitted with the only guns to be seen anywhere. Certainly to us, the now residents of North Front, having only recently left a war torn Britain the atmosphere was appalling with all concerned, Garrison and local population alike, living in a dream world with heads stuck firmly in the sand just waiting for the end to come and not caring which side won.
When operations were commenced on "December 1st England was still fighting a lone war but by the 11th Japan had delivered her attack on pearl Harbour which had almost immediately brought America fully into the war as allies. Although this was good news it meant that now it was even that much more important to make sure that Gibraltar was kept free and secure to enable our war lords to talk to and convince the Americans of the need for a North African campaign as soon as possible.
The German "U" boats had taken the initiative from the British navy and put Gibraltar in the melting pot. It is difficult to understand why their High Command failed to help them consolidate what they had started.
With the possibility of such immense political advantages at stake let alone the strategy value of capturing Gibraltar had they have followed through at about the same time as the Pearl Harbour attack and since Germany and Japan were allies it was not too much of an assumption to expect that the Germans would have had prior knowledge of the attack.

Such a success for the Germans at that time would have been devastating for the British. Our position at North Front was almost, in effect, untenable.
We expected the Germans to do something that would prevent our Hudson's from operating. What was likely to happen we were only left to assume but the inference at the time seemed to suggest that the biggest threat was from the Spanish mainland and to this end We carried on under a sort of order, in the event, that would have given us about twenty minutes to fly off all aircraft ready to fly destroy all others and then to vacate the place by retreating into the "Rock".
The possibility of such aircraft as Hudson's flying from such a place could not have been envisaged by anyone and no doubt this led to some confusion so that by the time the Germans realized just where they were operating from it was too late to do much about assisting their "U" Boats in what they were attempting to do.

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