Beyond his years he was accelerated to the senior level of Wing Commander one week before his twenty-first birthday, 13 April 1939, to be the youngest in Australia. Why so young, where were the more experienced flyers to fill these posts? Short sightedly, they had been thrown into the conflict at the outbreak of war, the flying instructors who had trained these young men.

The years 1943/44 my father, Frederick William Mann was Commanding Officer of 31 Squadron in the North West of Australia tasked to harass the advancing Japanese and prevent an invasion. Flying five-ton twin-engined Beaufighter aircraft, nick-named the Whispering Death, these long-range machines were able to take the war to bases and shipping of the enemy. Daddy was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for destroying two Japanese troop ships.

Daddy describes those years in his book, "Search and Destroy" where the reader is taken into the lives of very young men, many confiding to their CO of fear on every mission; a fear understood, recording how he lit a cigarette before any contact with the enemy, always with the thought it may be his last!

While my father survived the war, his young brother-in-law, Richard Drake-Brockman was shot down over the Arafura Sea on a reconnaissance mission the week he was to turn twenty-one. Daddy was terribly upset as he liked to keep in contact with Uncle Dicky to remind him about a particularly deadly Japanese gunner who was always on duty on Thursdays. My uncle died on Thursday.

In 1945 Daddy was seconded to the RAF as a liaison officer for the attack on Normandy and beyond, past D-Day. He was the first Beaufighter pilot to go to England from the Colonies. He said he 'had quite a bit to do with the Bristol factory and at the end of the war he flying some "Spitties” in England, but mainly Vampires'; Geoffrey de Haviland was killed in one. He said Defence gave him a Vampire to asses and play with, to see if the RAAF would like to add it to their fleet but to the embarrassment of my father, they refused. He was given a model of the plane, one of three, while the RAF wanted him to stay on as test pilot but he was homesick and I had just been born! His grandson, Julian has the model today.

My father also said he liked Mustangs, they had a beautiful Merlin engine and were made in Canada.

He was a pilot all his life, building a final light plane in his driveway when he was seventy-eight years old.

I remember when he began sharing stories of his time in Europe with one memory disturbing him increasingly in his latter years. He was moving through a township in France helping a British platoon clear buildings of snipers when entering one he surprised a young German who would have been no older than sixteen years. Daddy said he looked into the boy’s terrified face and shot and killed him, "he was trying to kill me but he was terrified, I see still see his eyes" he told me. Daddy was then twenty-six.

On another occasion he was with a fellow Australian officer in a jeep one night during D-Day and became separated from the main force. They were completely lost with mist swirling around and dare not move for fear of running into the enemy. My father had been give a bottle of French cognac by an adoring woman, whose restaurant they had liberated. They decided they would settle down in a small depression in the landscape and drink it all!

LEST WE FORGET

ANZAC DAY SATURDAY 25 APRIL 2020

He liked Mustangs

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