Spitfire ace’s role shared in TV series

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He’s celebrated now as a Spitfire ace, one of the valiant defenders of the tiny, but strategically crucial, island of Malta.

In 1941-’42, as a Canadian serving with the Royal Air Force, he shot down seven German aircraft – and damaged many others – out of the countless waves of Messerschmidt fighters and Junkers and Dornier bombers the Luftwaffe sent to pummel the Mediterranean outpost into submission.

For some 20 years after the end of the Second World War, however, White Rock resident Ian Maclennan wouldn’t even talk about his experiences – and resisted invitations to attend pilot reunions, until encouraged by the late British ace Johnnie Johnson.

Even a few years ago, his daughter, Joss, and son, Bruce – while aware their father had served with the RAF – had no idea what he’d done, or that he’d received the Distinguished Flying Medal for his exploits.

But the former pilot – who after the war had a highly distinguished career as an architect in Canada, the U.S. and Venezuela, and served in many important posts including vice-president of the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation – couldn’t avoid the limelight of his war service forever.

Thanks to a four-part series, Battlefield Mysteries, which will premieres on the History Channel Nov. 13 as part of the Remembrance Week lineup, his part in the Siege of Malta will be much more widely known.

A quiet, courteous but plain-spoken man, who looks nothing close to his 89 years, he returned to Malta earlier this year for the filming of The Siege Of Malta, the second episode of the documentary series, produced by Toronto’s Breakthrough Films and Television.

Given a hero’s welcome by the press and people of the island, he was greeted with celebrity treatment, including frequent requests for autographs, as he visited the Spitfire on display at the Malta Aviation Museum.

Interviewed in the home overlooking Semiahmoo Bay he shares with Nina, his wife for more than 60 years, Maclennan recalls much had been made during the visit of his “fighter pilot’s eyes.”

Still a dazzling ice blue, they became teary as he recalls the devastating bombing of the island.

“I’d actually been having some trouble with my eyes, which made them tearier than usual, but it was very emotional when I was there.”

Asked what his strongest memory of the Siege of Malta is today, he doesn’t hesitate before saying “mostly the guys who got shot down in my flight.”

MACLENNAN was 23 when he was sent to Malta. Born in Gull Lake, Sask., he was son of a superintendent of schools and had studied to be an engineer, at his father’s urging, for two years before he joined the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1940.

He took to the legendary Spitfire naturally, even though its cramped cockpit meant his elbows always touched the sides – a fact he recalled when he again sat in the aircraft for the filming of The Siege Of Malta.

“Anybody could fly it, that was the genius of it. It was a very forgiving aircraft, a beautiful aircraft to fly.”

Even while training in Canada, Maclennan had acquired a reputation for recklessly stunting planes, and his early career as a sergeant pilot with the RCAF in England was marred by reprimands for a number of scrapes and crash landings.

After “pranging” a Spitfire at 401 Squadron RCAF, he was told by his flight commander, rather pointedly, “they’re looking for volunteers for Malta.”

“I said, ‘Sure, I’ll go,’” he recalls with a chuckle.

He landed on the island in July 1941, joining 1435 Squadron. Whoever controlled Malta controlled vital Mediterranean supply routes, and by 1941 the island was virtually isolated by a blockade of German and Italian submarines.

Only a couple of British destroyers could make it through to supply the forces on the island until August of 1942 when a large convoy, at great cost, managed a landing.

Until then, the defenders, including controversial Canadian ace George “Buzz” Beurling – who became a friend of Maclennan’s – endured many privations. Dysentery and malnutrition were common and rations were eked out painfully. Most of the pilots lost a great deal of weight, although Maclennan doesn’t now recall being seriously sick during his time on the island.

There were five RAF squadrons on Malta, none of them anywhere near full flying strength. Maclennan calculates that at any time there were around 24 airworthy Spitfires ready to be scrambled against German raiding formations that could be as high as 40 bombers and 50-60 fighters.

“Our big advantage was that we had the sun behind us. The guys who won the battle were the ground controllers who put us in the picture at the right spot and the right height to give us the best ‘bounce.’ We had a little code wheel we carried with us and they could radio us something like ‘CV4’ which would mean they were coming in at 60 degrees at a height of 20,000 feet.”

By the time he was posted to Malta, Maclennan had figured out the grim business of shooting down the enemy .

“I’d shot at ducks when I was a boy – I knew about deflection.” Even so, he had virtually no gunnery training until after he became an ace, he recalled. “The first time I fired my machine guns was in combat. In the air a Messerschmidt 109 could look bigger than this house at 300 yards.”

With only about 20 seconds worth of incendiary ammunition in his gun belts, it could soon be used up at too long a range. “I had to learn to save it up until I was right on top of the son of a bitch, and then let him have it.”

Maclennan’s attitude to the raiders was not improved by the merciless pounding they were giving the island’s residents and its ancient and beautiful architecture – something he believes, to this day, was strategically unneccessary.

“I was out to destroy the other guy – there was no question about that.” He had seven ‘confirmed’ victories while serving in Malta, plus a series of ‘probables’ and other aircraft to which he caused serious damage – and won promotion to Flight Lieutenant. But it wasn’t the end of his war adventures.

Flying over Normandy on a strafing mission on D-Day, his third sortie of the day, he was brought down by ground fire and taken prisoner. He was sent to Stalag Luft III, in Silesia east of Berlin. As Allied forces approached, he was among prisoners removed from the camp by the Germans. Many were forced on a brutal and deadly march northwards, but Maclennan, hospitalized because of asthma, was sent southwards by train.

Near Austria he and another prisoner escaped, hiding out on farms until they connected with advancing Americans and were given transportation to Paris.

By May of 1945 he was back in London, searching for his girlfriend, Nina. “It was hard to find her. She’d been told I was killed.”

Although he and Nina were reunited, and have been together ever since, it was a bitter homecoming. Maclennan found out that his 20-year-old brother Bruce – whom he still recalls as “a bright, funny kid” – had died little more than a month before he got back to England. A wireless air gunner, the younger brother was lost on a daylight bombing raid near Hamburg. Maclennan still believes it was the fault of Bomber Command tacticians who hadn’t learned from the large, protective formations the Americans used to great success.

“They’d send out Lancasters on their own and the fighters would just pick them off. It was a needless death – but I couldn’t tell my parents that.”

One thing he did tell his parents when he came home was that he wasn’t a Roman Catholic any more. He still believed in God, but organized religion couldn’t supply the answers for him.

“While I was a prisoner of war I did a lot of reading of philosophy – Nietszche, Spinoza, people like that. I was hanging on by my fingernails.”

Mclennan doesn’t apologize for what he had to do in time of war, especially when facing an enemy that had proved ruthless in Blitzkrieg attacks on virtually undefended nations.

But it’s surely significant that after the war, his life’s focus was on creating and building things – particularly housing for low-income families. And every summer, he returns to France – the country where he once strafed trains in low-flying attacks – for leisurely canal journeys on the Thetis, the 100-year-old barge he owns there.

“It’s a great way to see the country,” he agreed, “at the high speed of five miles an hour.”

 

Great story, I'm always glad to read about this fine man, I'll be certainly happy to see him on TV too.

 

Hi Ike, thank you for such a great story to read. I'm glad that his story is going to finally be told.

 

Thanks. Marking my calendar for Nov 13.

 

Quite welcome, and I hope by then we have Cable TV hooked up.