Wartime Heroes in the Battle of Britain

Today we are commemorating Battle of Britain Day which occurred 80 years ago on 15 September 1940 when the Luftwaffe launched a massive attack on London hoping to draw out and destroy the RAF fighters. Although War was declared on 3 September 1939 and there was an air raid warning, the Germans did not bomb London during the so called ‘phoney war’ until a year later when the Blitz began on 7 September 1940.

Here we look at two war heroes from Kilburn and West Hampstead.

Gordon Wedlock
Gordon Victor Wedlock was born in December 1918 when his parents William and Edith were living at 64 Gascony Avenue in Kilburn. About 1926 they moved to 9 Homestead Park near Gladstone Park in Willesden. Gordon was a pupil at Dudden Hill School and then won a scholarship to Kilburn Grammar School. He joined the Electricity Department of Willesden Council in 1936, working under the aptly named Mr Spark and the following year, signed up for the RAF Volunteer Reserve. This meant many of his evenings and most weekends were devoted to learning about flying and aircraft.

After he was called up on 1 September 1939, Gordon completed his training as a navigator in long-range fighters. By 31 March 1940 he was serving with 235 Squadron at North Coates, an airfield in Lincolnshire, close to the mouth of the Humber estuary. On 18 November, he was in Blenheim Z5732, escorting Beaufort fighter planes over the Dutch coast. The Blenheim was hit by fire from a German Heinkel 115 and the pilot, Flight Lieutenant William Goddard was wounded and started to bleed profusely. Showing great presence of mind, Gordon stayed calm and managed to tie a tourniquet to staunch the blood, while still navigating. He helped Goddard to keep the plane on course until it reached Coltishall, where it crash landed. Amazingly, Wedlock walked away uninjured.

Goddard received the DFC, and Gordon was awarded the Distinguished Flying Medal at a ceremony at Buckingham Palace in front of his proud parents. The medal citation read:

‘This N.C.O has been with the squadron since March 1940 and has acted as navigator on almost every operational flight of his section. On the 18th November 1940 the pilot of his aircraft was severely wounded in the leg during an engagement off the Dutch coast. Sgt. Wedlock under very difficult conditions, managed to put a tourniquet round the pilot's leg and kept it in place, and at the same time, navigate the aircraft back to the nearest aerodrome, a distance of 150 miles. It was chiefly due to his coolness that the pilot was kept conscious during the return flight and that the aircraft and crew landed safely without further damage’.

 

Gordon got a week’s leave in recognition of this award and visited his old office in Willesden to show the medal to his colleagues. He was 22-years old. In a newspaper interview he gave at the time, he modestly told the reporter, ‘I am one of the lucky ones, so many men deserve it but never get it’. The article noted he had been appointed an instructor to observers in England. Gordon left the RAF in 1946 with the rank of Squadron Leader. He must have liked teaching, as he had been working as a schoolmaster at the time of his death in a nursing home in Lancashire in 1963.

James Bridley Nicolson
James Nicolson was the only man to be awarded the Victoria Cross during the Battle of Britain. Eric James Brindley Nicolson, to give him his full name, was born on 29 April 1917 at 38 Crediton Hill in West Hampstead. In WWI, his father Leslie Nicolson had served in the Royal Naval Air Service which became part of the RAF. The family were from Edinburgh, but by 1911 Leslie was living at 70 Redington Road in Hampstead where his father James Gordon Nicolson is shown as the managing director of public companies.

Leslie was at 38 Crediton Hill from about 1914 to 1921 and then moved to Hove, and he died in Shoreham by Sea in 1943. In 1920 James Nicolson had moved from Hampstead and was at 52 Crediton Hill where he died there of pneumonia in 1929.

James Brindley Nicolson was educated at Tonbridge School, a public boarding school. He began work in 1935 as an experimental engineer in Shoreham. Disliking the work, he joined the RAF on 21 December 1936 as an acting pilot officer, after he had begun his training the previous month at the White Waltham civil flying school. On 7 August 1937 he joined 72 squadron at Church Fenton, then flying Gloster Gladiator fighters but in April 1939 it began re-equipping with Spitfires and soon afterwards, on 12 May, Nicolson was promoted to Flying Officer.

Nicolson, known as Nick to his friends, was a tall, high-spirited, extrovert and gregarious young man. On 29 July 1939 he married Muriel Caroline Kendall, the daughter of a farmer of Kirkby Wharfe. They had one son called James, who was born in the late summer of 1940.

After the outbreak of War, 72 squadron moved to Leconfield and later became part of the newly formed 249 fighter squadron with Nicolson promoted to acting Flight Commander. In June it was re-equipped with Hawker Hurricanes and was sent on 14 August 1940 to Boscombe Down, Wiltshire, to reinforce the defence of southern England against the massed attacks of the Luftwaffe.

Just two days later, on 16 August soon after midday, the squadron was scrambled to patrol the airspace between Poole and Romsey, with Nicolson leading the three Hurricanes of red section. After a diversion towards enemy planes over Gosport, which were engaged by Spitfires, red section climbed to join the main formation. At this point they were attacked by Messerschmitt Me 110s who attacked out of the sun and all three Hurricanes were hit. One of Nicolson’s colleagues managed to return to base, but the other was forced to bale out and fell to his death after his parachute collapsed. Nicolson’s plane was struck by cannon fire in the cockpit and the fuselage fuel tank, and he was wounded in the foot and the face. With his cockpit ablaze he prepared to bale out, but at this moment a Me 110 dived in front of him. Despite being on fire and wounded, Nicolson attacked and forced the enemy plane to take evasive action. 

In his combat report he said, ‘he continued firing till I could bear heat no more’. He bailed out at 12,000 ft and parachuted down. Nicolson saw a circling Me 109 fighter and pretended to ‘play dead’; luckily he was not shot at. But nearing the ground, he was given painful shotgun wounds in the buttocks by an overzealous sergeant in the Local Defence Volunteers (Dad's Army) who thought he was a German pilot. Nicolson’s first experience of aerial combat had lasted less than fifty minutes.

Badly wounded and suffering from severe burns, he was taken to the Royal Southampton Hospital. After recovery, he was posted to the RAF convalescent facility at Torquay where, on 15 November 1940, he learned that he had been awarded the Victoria Cross. He received the medal from King George VI at Buckingham Palace on 25 November.

 Nicolson's medals (RAF Museum Hendon)

Nicolson was unique as the only pilot of RAF Fighter Command to win the Victoria Cross during the whole war, because he was the only one with the required two witnesses.

Despite his injuries Nicolson sought the earliest return to flying duties, and on 24 February 1941 he joined the instructional staff of a training unit. He returned to flying that April and on 22 September he was given command at Hibaldstow North Lincolnshire, of an experimental night-fighter unit equipped with the twin-engined American built Douglas Havoc Turbinlite.

Six months later, on 17 March 1942, he was posted to Alipore, India, becoming staff officer at the headquarters of 293 wing. Another desk job followed, with an attachment to air headquarters at Bengal in mid-December. His wish for a more active role was granted on 4 August 1943 when he was given command of 27 squadron at Agartala, Burma. The squadron’s De Havilland Mosquito fighter-bombers were to be deployed in support of the jungle campaign. While in this command Nicolson was awarded the DFC, ‘for consistently showing himself to be a courageous and enterprising leader’.

Nicolson left 27 squadron on 11 August 1944 to become wing commander (training) at the 3rd Tactical Air Force headquarters at Comilla, Bengal. While there he spent time with 355 squadron at Salboni, assessing the results of aircrew training. The squadron’s Liberator bombers were engaged in long-range missions on Japanese targets in Burma, and on 1 May 1945 Nicolson joined a plane as an observer for a raid on Rangoon. Two hours after take-off the plane’s starboard engines caught fire and on 2 May 1945 the plane ditched in the Bay of Bengal. There were only two survivors from the crew of eleven: one of them reported seeing Nicolson give a cheery thumbs-up sign just before taking his ditching station. It was the last time that he was seen alive and his body was never found. Nicolson is commemorated on the Singapore memorial alongside his companions. On 29 October 1946 his widow Muriel, with their young son, received his DFC at a ceremony at Buckingham Palace.

In April 1983 during the Falklands War, his son James decided as a protest against the poor widows’ pension, to sell his father’s medals to provide money for his mother. A group was set up and bought the medals at auction for the world record price of £110,000. 

Son James holding his father's medals before the auction

In December 2003 Muriel was forced to sell her husband’s mementos at Christie’s to raise further money. She died two years later in Yorkshire.

There is an interesting short film about Nicolson with a tribute by Lord Ashcroft:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFxIrwcC8A8

The importance of Battle of Britain Day is that on 15 September 1940 because of their costly losses, the Luftwaffe accepted they could not sustain an air invasion of Britain and gave up daytime raids and only attacked by night.