Obituaries

[Vic Balshaw]

[Colin1]

Pilot in the Spanish Civil War who later flew for the Soviet Union, commanding Stalin's fighter escort

Jose Maria Bravo, who died on 26 December aged 92, was a Republican pilot during the Spanish Civil War and later served in the Soviet Air Force, commanding Stalin's fighter escort on the dictator's journey to meet Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt at the Tehran Conference in 1943. Bravo volunteered for the Republican Air Force in Barcelona in December 1936, five months after a faction of the Spanish army rose up against the government and triggered the Civil War.

He trained in the Soviet Union and returned to Spain in June 1937 as a sergeant pilot, in time to take part in the battle of Brunete, a Republican offensive to push back the Nationalists' encirclement of Madrid. Bravo initially flew Russian Polikarpov I-15 biplanes but was rapidly equipped with I-16s, monoplane fighters that dominated the Spanish skies until the arrival of the German and Italian air forces. The Republicans nicknamed their aircraft moscas, or flies. Although the Russian aircraft were highly manoeuverable, Bravo later said that they were insufficiently armed to tackle German bombers. The two 7.62mm machine guns fired "pellets that were not very efficient against the Junkers and Heinkel aircraft that the Germans supplied to Franco".

Bravo was a skilful pilot and was rapidly promoted. In April 1938 he became a squadron leader and four months later, aged 21, was named second in command of the 21st Group, the Republic's best-equipped fighter unit.

Born into a middle-class family in Madrid on 8 April 1917, Bravo received a secular education and was an exchange student in Germany when Adolf Hitler became chancellor in 1933. At university he was a talented student whose course was interrupted by the Civil War. As a young man, he learned to fly gliders in Ocana, south of Madrid.

In February 1939, with the fall of Catalonia to the Nationalists, Bravo fled across the Pyrenees to France, where he spent four months interned in the Argeles-sur-mer and Gurs camps in the south of the country. On his release he moved to the Soviet Union, completing his Engineering degree in Kharkov in the Ukraine.

When Nazi Germany invaded in the summer of 1941, Bravo joined a group of Spanish Republican guerrillas that harried the advancing Wehrmacht's supply lines near the Sea of Azov, north of the Black Sea. Bravo later said he resented having to fight on foot "I had become a pilot so that I wouldn't have to walk, and there I was marching night after night through knee-deep snow while surrounded by the enemy".

In 1942 he was admitted into the Soviet Air Force where he served in a unit that flew I-16s defending vital oilfields in Baku, on the western shore of the Caspian Sea. In total, Bravo flew 1,700 combat hours on I-16s and emerged from two wars without a scratch. He did, however, come off a runway into a gully in Caspe, eastern Spain and was involved in a mid-air collision near the Caspian Sea.

All former Republican pilots were demobbed in 1948 following the defection of one of their number to Turkey in a stolen aircraft. Bravo, however, remained in the Soviet Union and became a professor of Spanish at Moscow State University. He was an expert on Russian poetry and translated many of the classics of Russian literature into Spanish. In 1960 he was allowed to return to Spain by the Franco regime.

In 2007 Bravo published his memoirs El seis doble (double six), a reference to the domino piece that was painted on the tail fin of his unit's planes. Bravo said it represented the 12 aircraft in a squadron and the value of teamwork.

As an octegenarian, Bravo helped raise funds to restore a Polikarpov I-16 and in 2005 was able to fly the machine while accompanied by another pilot. After the transition to democracy the Spanish government formally recognised his rank in the Soviet Air Force.

Bravo was twice married and is survived by his second wife, a daughter and a son.

[vikingBerserker]

Nice post.

[Gnomey]

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[v2]

Air Commodore Charles Widdows- oldest BoB veteran has died...

Charles Widdows, believed to have been the oldest surviving Battle of Britain pilot, has died in Guernsey on 8th January 2010.
The 100-year-old former night fighter test pilot, pictured – who was the first to fly a production Hurricane, L1547, – died at Les Bourgs Hospice.
He retired to the island from Surrey in 1968 and lived at his Rohais home with Nickie, his beloved wife and constant companion of 70 years, until just a few days before his death, which was announced yesterday by his family.
Although he arrived in Guernsey planning a ‘quiet life’, he soon had a high profile in the community, becoming involved in various areas of island life including politics and Scouting. He was elected a States deputy from 1973 to 1979 with the winning slogan: ‘If it’s new blood you want – vote Widdows’.
Speaking yesterday, his eldest son, Robin, said his father’s health had recently deteriorated, leading to his short stay at the hospice. But, he added, his final days there had been very peaceful.
‘The staff were wonderful and we are extremely grateful to them. He was so well looked after during those last few days.’
He added that the Air Commodore, who led 29 Squadron, which today operates the Eurofighter Typhoon, died in the early hours.

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TO

[Gnomey]

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[syscom3]

The ranks of the pre war pilots are getting thinner and thinner.

[v2]

John Leavitt

Leavitt joined No 617 (Dambuster) Squadron in September 1944. His first two operations after arriving were against Tirpitz, which was sheltering in the fjords of northern Norway. On October 29 1944 he flew as the second pilot with an experienced captain. Over the target, their Lancaster was hit by the battleship's anti-aircraft fire, which hit one of the fuel tanks. Running very short of fuel, the two pilots made a forced-landing at an airfield in the Shetlands.

On November 11, Leavitt piloted one of 31 Lancasters that mounted a second attack against "The Beast", a name given to Tirpitz by Winston Churchill. After taking off at night from an airfield in northern Scotland, Leavitt headed for the rendezvous near the Norwegian/Swedish border. At dawn, he saw flak ahead and skirted its position. He commented: "The terrain below was precipitous and barren, and at the same time magnificent. I have never felt so completely alone in my life."

Leavitt dropped his "Tallboy" bomb from 15,000ft a minute after the leader (Wing Commander "Willie" Tait). His aimer saw the 12,000lb bomb drop into the centre of the smoke erupting from the battleship. A short time later, Tirpitz capsized with large loss of life.

Leavitt also attacked the naval pens at Bremen, Ijmuiden, and Hamburg. On March 27, flying a specially modified Lancaster, he dropped a 22,000lb "Grand Slam" deep penetration bomb on the U-boat construction pens at Farge.

His 21st and final operation was against Hitler's southern redoubt at Berchtesgaden on April 25. Snow on the ground prevented his bomb aimer from identifying the target and their Tallboy was dropped on a viaduct spotted on the return route.

After the war he remained in the RAF and continued to fly Lancasters until he retired as a flight lieutenant in September 1946 and returned to the USA.

John Howland Leavitt was born, during a Zeppelin raid, in Paris on February 6 1918. His American father later served as a US Consular translator to the Versailles Treaty. His mother was English. He was named John Howland after an ancestor who had arrived in America on the Mayflower with the Pilgrims in 1620; after education in Turkey he returned with his parents to the US, attending Darien High School, Connecticut, where his peers elected him the student most likely to succeed.

A graduate of Brown University, Rhode Island, Leavitt was back in Turkey teaching English at Robert College when Britain declared war in 1939. Keen to get involved, he volunteered to fly with the RAF, applying through the British Consulate in Istanbul.

He trained as a pilot in Rhodesia and South Africa before heading to England to convert to the Lancaster. After the attack on Pearl Harbor he applied for a transfer to the USAAC, but on being told that this would require him to repeat all his training, he opted to remain with the RAF.

At the end of the war, he joined the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), forerunner of the CIA, as an intelligence analyst, specialising in Middle Eastern issues and drafting National Intelligence Estimates, including his favourite assessment in the early 1950s – that it would be a long time before the Arabs and Israelis saw eye-to-eye on any issue.

Soon after, he transferred to the CIA's Directorate of Operations and joined the Agency's campaign to reinstate the Shah in Iran. He spent 15 of his 30 years of service at US embassies in Tehran, Athens, Ankara and Tel Aviv. Though he retired in 1978, he returned to the Agency to assist with the Iran Hostage Crisis and the bombing of the American Embassy in Beirut in 1983.

In retirement Leavitt travelled widely to visit his large extended family. A keen golfer, he enjoyed partnering his wife, who played to county level.

John Leavitt died on December 31. He was married to his first wife, Lilias, an English WAAF signals officer whom he met at RAF Waddington during the war, from 1945 until her death in 1972. After a brief second marriage, he married his third wife, Judy, also a former WAAF, whom he met at a 617 Squadron reunion at Woodhall Spa in 1983. She died in 2003. He is survived by two sons and two daughters from his first marriage.

source: Telegraph

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Dam

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