Sniper of the Skies: The Story of George Frederick 'Screwball' Beurling, DSO, DFC, DFM

By Nick Thomas

When asked to conjure an impression of the 'typical fighter pilot', you may be inclined to think of the confident, extroverted, gregarious type, rallying his men and flying in the pursuit of victory. George Frederick 'Screwball' Beurling, DSO, DFC, and DFM, certainly achieved more victories than most typical fighter pilots dream of, but in temperament, personality and style, he was a one-off.

A devout Christian, teetotaler and non-smoker, Beurling wasn't to be found patronising the local bars with his fellow pilots. Instead, he committed himself solely to the art of aerial combat. His very first missions saw him pursuing lone German fighters that he ultimately destroyed. He was determined to retain focus, noting how the men who did indulge had much briefer and much less effective tours.

In Maltese skies he really came into his own, shooting down 27 Axis aircraft in just 14 days. In the month of July 1942, he secured five 'kills' in just four days. In the process he was awarded the DSO, DFC and DFM, along with hero-status amongst his fellow pilots and members of the public. He survived the war, only to be killed three years later whilst landing a transport aircraft following a test flight. This biographical study serves as a tribute to one of the most successful and intriguing fighter pilots of the twentieth century, and should appeal broadly to fans of the genre.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pen and Sword
• Release date: Jul 30, 2015
• ISBN: 9781473866652

Book preview

Introduction

George Beurling

George Beurling was born in Verdun, Canada, in 1921. His family were good, honest working-class people, who raised their five children under the doctrine of the Plymouth Brethren.

From a very early age, Beurling knew what he wanted to do and that was to become an aviator. Mentored by a bush pilot named Ted Hogan, Beurling quickly gained experience in the second seat. By the age of 12 he had ‘handled the controls’ and, with Ted’s help, gradually built up his hours in the pilot’s seat.

There were no easy stepping-stones to Beurling’s goal, no Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve, Auxiliary Air Force, or government sponsored flying schools. In order to further his aims, Beurling was eventually forced to leave school and take up full-time employment just to be able to afford one flying lesson a week.

When war came, Beurling was already an accomplished pilot, but he was refused entry into the RCAF due to having not completed his schooling. Instead he worked his passage to Britain onboard a munitions ship in order to enlist in the RAF (a hazardous journey he had to repeat in order to collect the necessary paperwork required for entry into the Service).

Initially frustrated by having to begin pilot training from scratch, Beurling quickly demonstrated his ‘natural’ abilities, both as a pilot and as a marksman and was able to train his eyes to change focus and to pinpoint distant targets with extraordinary speed and accuracy.

Despite some trials and tribulations, Beurling passed out of his training course and Operational Training Unit, and was posted to No. 403 Squadron. Here, he flew Spitfires over enemy-occupied Europe on sweeps and escorts, also making occasional scrambles. His flying record was not unlike that of a 100 other pilots and he was frequently to be found flying as ‘Tail-end-Charlie’, the most vulnerable position in the entire formation; a role he fulfilled without dissent.

Things changed for Beurling when No. 403 Squadron became solely an RCAF unit and he was obliged to transfer away to No. 41 Squadron. Despite being a seasoned pilot, Beurling once again found himself flying at the rear of a formation. This role had nearly cost him his life while with No. 403 Squadron and, when he was put in a similar position with his new unit, he was forced to break formation with a crippled Spitfire. Nevertheless he managed to damage one of his attackers; this he did with only half of his guns still working.

This action left Beurling being accused of leaving the rest of his section exposed, although he insisted that he only broke formation because he was under attack and had a damaged Spitfire. His CO evidently agreed. A second incident followed three days later, when his CO and the rest of the Squadron initially ignored his radio message warning of an imminent attack (no-one else could see the enemy, only closer friendly aircraft and dismissed his warnings). The late manoeuvre carried out by his CO would have left Beurling as an easy target, so he broke formation and turned defence into attack, destroying one of the enemy and partially breaking up the attack. From this moment, his fate was sealed and he was ostracised by most of the Squadron and accused of being a ‘loner’, a label which stuck for the rest of his career. A few weeks later, Beurling learned of an overseas posting and stepped in to take the place of an unwilling pilot.

Beurling was posted as a relief pilot to the besieged island of Malta. Here he joined No. 249 Squadron, flying Spitfire Mk Vcs out of Takali airfield. Within weeks, the enemy had turned their full attention on Malta in what was dubbed the July Blitz.

In a matter of a few days, Beurling had claimed his first victory and, in the space of a four month tour of combat operations, he would destroy twenty-seven enemy aircraft, with a further nine damaged. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Medal and Bar, before being promoted as a further acknowledgement of his bravery and devotion to duty. As a junior officer, Beurling was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Distinguished Service Order. This latter award caused some controversy, as the DSO was considered a medal awarded for leadership and Beurling did not command in the air. However, it was argued that in the same way the great aces of the First World War had led by example, so had Beurling. His CO, ‘Laddie’ Lucas, joined Group Captain Donaldson in stating that Beurling was tireless in his combat, and always remained very positive in front of his fellow pilots and the ‘erks’.

Douglas-Hamilton recalled that the young Canadian, ‘was generally smiling, and nearly always in what is popularly known as good form’, a sentiment which is echoed, time after time, by his contemporaries on Malta.

Yet Beurling had not led a charmed life; during his time fighting out of Malta, his own Spitfire was damaged on several occasions, and he was forced to crash-land or bail out and was wounded twice. Despite his exertions and wounds, Beurling never showed his tiredness or battle fatigue. Beurling’s extended tour of operations only came to an end due to the concerted efforts of his doctor, CO and the personal intervention of the AOC.

If caught in the gun-sight of an enemy (the Malta pilots regularly faced odds of five, ten or twenty to one), Beurling could throw his Spitfire around like no other pilot. One of his tricks was to pull back so hard on the ‘stick’ that his aircraft would stall violently and be thrown over onto its back before entering a spin – a move no enemy pilot could follow and which few Spitfire pilots dared emulate. Another method of dropping out of combat like a stone was to simultaneously push both ailerons and the rudder into a turn. Beurling was expert at turning defence into attack and, on one occasion, when faced by four enemy aircraft firing at him in a pincer movement, he deliberately flew into the Macchi Mc 202’s rounds rather than take the cannon shells of the Messerschmitt Bf 109s. His gamble paid off.

Beurling had been accused of being a ‘loner’ while flying with No. 403 Squadron, and it was said that the air battle over Malta suited his mentality. From this the idea has grown that he was allowed to just go off and shoot down enemy aircraft at will. This is far from the truth. Over Malta No. 249 Squadron generally flew in pairs, something his flight commander Laddie Lucas drummed into Beurling on day two. The young Canadian took his leader’s words onboard and was never reprimanded for disobeying this rule, nor any other order. He was not guilty of waging a private war, as the island was limited in its 100 octane fuel supply and every sortie had to count. No-one, not even Beurling at the height of his prowess as a fighter-ace, had licence to roam freely and shoot down enemy aircraft. When Beurling’s Spitfire suffered radio failure (a valid excuse to act alone) he duly returned to base. If Beurling was scrambled, he followed the Controller’s orders and the same went for air tests, or any other authorised flight; if given a vector, he obeyed orders, otherwise he landed. Moreover, Beurling was a team player and constantly saved the lives of his fellow pilots in combat, on more than one occasion being shot down as a result. His ‘kills’ were largely attained while fighting in a general dogfight, hence they were witnessed by his pals and allowed. Occasionally Beurling became separated and his ‘kills’ were downgraded to ‘probables’ or ‘damaged’, but that was true of any fighter pilot.

What Beurling did do, which enabled him to stand out from the crowd, was to sit in his cockpit awaiting the scramble, keen to get even a few seconds height advantage in a battle climb, by reducing his scramble time. Due to fuel shortages, the Controller was forced to wait until the very last moment before giving the scramble, as he had to be certain that a raid was not a feint. It was also vital to only use the minimum number of aircraft to effectively deal with the threat, so as to hold back a reserve in order to tackle the next raid.

Sometimes, Beurling’s extra minutes in the air meant that he and his wingman had the advantage of height over the rest of the formation. He used this to the Squadron’s advantage and would act as spotter or come down on enemy fighters, who were aiming to catch the Spitfire pilots out, by attacking from above and out of the sun. On other occasions, Beurling waited until he spotted the most highly skilled enemy pilot – and dived down to take him on.

When he did go into combat, Beurling used his ammunition sparingly, lining up his enemy at close range before pressing the gun-button, often shooting down or badly damaging two, three or even four enemy aircraft in a single sortie. His keen eyesight, steady nerve, and mastery of deflection firing quickly made him Malta’s highest scoring ace; this despite bouts of Malta Dog, a type of dysentery brought on by the siege conditions.

On 14 October 1942, Beurling once again came to the rescue of one of his pals, although this time he was shot down and wounded in the heel. Evacuated to Gibraltar, Beurling could not escape the drama and was one of a handful of tour-expired pilots to survive an air crash.

Having left his homeland as an anonymous deckhand on an ammunition ship, Beurling returned a national hero, having been front-page news since the end of July 1942. He then embarked on a tour of Canada promoting War Bonds. His fame meant that he was treated like a movie star, something that was ruthlessly exploited by the RCAF and politicians. It was through a series of interviews (by a press used to spinning wartime propaganda) and his semi auto-biography Malta Spitfire (written by Leslie Roberts, but based on seventeen days of interviews), that the world got a glimpse of the complex character that was George Beurling.

Beurling was a journalist’s dream and the press hung on his every word, which meant that they didn’t filter – such was Beurling’s fame and the need for patriotic accounts of the war, that any off-the-cuff comment was turned into a story and, to the modern reader, Beurling’s comments may sound blood-thirsty. Meanwhile, the unguarded words of fellow aviators, whose paths had crossed Beurling’s at one time or another, were used as the basis for articles. Like Beurling, their quotes were full of bravado, but this was what circumstances demanded. The press latched on to anything that would sell papers; Beurling was tall, handsome and dashing, with steely blue eyes and tousled hair, which, alongside his casual appearance and dislike for authority, all played into their hands. So too did his abstinence from both alcohol and cigarettes, which were extolled in one paper as great virtues.

At a time when the whole of mess life revolved around alcohol, Beurling explained his decision to abstain from drinking and smoking by pointing out that those around him who did indulge, often had briefer, less effective tours.

However, Beurling’s abstinence precluded him from the high-jinks of mess-life, which was dominated by heavy drinking and drunken games. While this had been no obstacle in Malta, back in the UK it meant that Beurling stood out from the crowd, and the press made much of quotes that Beurling was a ‘loner’, both in the air and on the ground, that he was untidy in his dress, and that he could be deliberately awkward and an anti-disciplinarian.

Bruce West later wrote:

‘It was during this triumphant tour that the press of Canada, with the best of intentions, often gave this bewildered kid a rough ride. He was outspoken and often the things he said – although they didn’t sound so bad coming from Beurling – looked not so good in cold print.

‘He hated discipline and perhaps that went with his love of the sky, and its lack of restrictions and barriers. He could never be rated as a shining example of what the well-dressed officer should wear. His regulation flat hat ceased to be a regulation flat hat shortly after Beurling had donned it.’

As to the accusation of never being correctly dressed, in the Malta theatre, as in North Africa, the Far East and elsewhere, there was little call for mess or parade dress. Under extreme combat conditions there was no need for rank badges; the officers and NCOs automatically showed each other due respect. Meanwhile, without the ‘erks’, the aircraft would not get up off the ground. Beurling did, however, balk at the idea of being made an officer and refused to wear the rank badges, and remained in the NCO’s quarters for as long as he could.

Beurling was often heard referring to things as being ‘Screwball’ and this stuck as his nickname, although the press at the time preferred to adopt his boyhood nicknames of ‘Buzz’ or ‘Buzzey.’

Despite hating the role of promoting War Bonds, Beurling was at least able to give lectures to fellow aviators, and pass on his experiences and his theories on deflection shooting, with many seasoned combat pilots later giving testimony to the value of his tuition.

Returning to the UK, Beurling was sent to become a gunnery instructor before achieving his dream of becoming a member of the RCAF. However, the Service didn’t have a clue as to how to handle an ace in his prime and Beurling’s talents were squandered in two pointless postings to Squadrons on the ‘bus run’, flying mass formations of fighters as escorts to bombing raids. Beurling would later claim that he flew fifty sorties without seeing an enemy aircraft and, although the figures were exaggerated, the sentiment was true.

As exceptional a pilot and marksman as he was, Beurling seems to have developed a low boredom threshold when it came to any non-combat flying.

While on a gunnery course post-Malta, he is said to have carried out drogue-firing while flying upside down. On another occasion, he was hauled up for low flying, which wouldn’t have been quite so bad on its own, however Beurling was hedge-hopping while flying inverted. When reprimanded, Beurling answered his CO’s criticism, claiming that it was actually far safer to hedge-hop a Spitfire upside down than right side up. His explanation was frighteningly logical: hedgehopping right side up, he pointed out, had one serious drawback as the Spitfire had a major blind spot area immediately beneath the engine. Flying inverted, there was no physical barrier to impair the view, ‘This, of course, allows you to cut the grass much closer.’

Beurling needed the excitement of combat and so the drudgery of mass formation escorts must have been intolerable. He soon began to show his displeasure, and was repeatedly reprimanded for low flying and unauthorised aerobatics.

Eventually, he was sent back to Canada and put on ferrying, only being allowed to fly as co-pilot. Consequently, he resigned his commission in a manner which today would be recognised as constructive dismissal.

Beurling became as reckless in his civilian life as he was in the Service. He married in haste and began, what would later become, an affair during his honeymoon. A string of bush flying jobs took him around Canada, never staying in one place more than a few months. He purchased his own aircraft, but got into trouble with the authorities for stunt-flying and for flying once his licence had expired.

In 1948 Beurling found another war. He left Canada for the last time bound for Israel, but died in a tragic air accident in Rome. Within a generation his name had been almost forgotten to all but those who had served alongside him in Malta. Over the last few decades, the heroes of the Second World War have witnessed a renaissance of interest and Beurling has been seen in a new light, as one of the greatest, but most misreported and misunderstood of all the Allied aces of the Second World War.

As Bruce West, a reporter and long-term friend of Beurling, wrote shortly after his death, ‘[He] wanted to be the best fighter pilot in the world. He never gave much thought to becoming the oldest fighter pilot in the world.’

Chapter One

To the Stars the Hard Way

George Frederick Beurling was born on 6 December 1921, in Verdun (now a suburb of Montreal), Quebec, the third of five children (Gladys, Elsie, George, Richard, and the youngest, David). His Swedish father, Frederick Gustav Beurling, was a commercial artist with the Claude Neon Company. George’s mother, Hetty Florence Gibbs, was born in the Montreal suburb of Pointe St Charles, but was of English descent. Frederick’s father had brought his family to Canada at the turn of the century, settling in the Miramichi Valley, New Brunswick. In order to anglicise the family name, he dropped the ‘k’ from Beurlingk.

George came from a very religious family. His parents, Hetty and Frederick, had met through the Presbyterian Church, and their early courtship had revolved around church meetings and events. However, some time after the couple married, Frederick became a member of the Plymouth Brethren, an Evangelical sect.

Hetty played the piano, and George learned his way around the keyboard at an early age and had a good singing voice. In adult life, his tone was compared favourably with that of Bing Crosby. Once old enough to select his own repertoire, and no longer restricted to hymns, Beurling would entertain himself, family and friends by singing contemporary ‘hits,’ which he picked up from the movies.

The young George Beurling enjoyed investigating the countryside around the family home, playing along the nearby creek, and walking the rolling hills and open fields. George and his cousin, David Murphy, used to idle away the hours along the Lachine Canal. Their favourite games included the cinema-inspired ‘cowboys and Indians,’ something which met with his parents’ (but not his aunt Dolly’s) disapproval on religious grounds. George and David used to swim in the creek, while George perfected his diving in Verdun’s public swimming baths, the Natatorium.

Dolly Murphy, George’s aunt, did not approve of Frederick’s strictness when it came to her nephew’s upbringing. Consequently, she turned a blind-eye to George reading comics and going to the Saturday ‘flicks’ with David.

While other kids relished playing with trains, fire engines, and other similar amusements, young Beurling’s toys consisted mostly of airplanes of every description and manufactured out of all sorts of materials.

When interviewed many years later, Beurling confessed that there wasn’t ever a time he could recall when, ‘airplanes and to get up in them’, hadn’t been the be all and end all of his dreams and ambitions.

Beurling was certainly bitten by the flying bug early. By the age of about nine he was spending all of his free time at the old Lasalle Road Airport, roughly three miles from his home as the crow flies. Here, he watched the airplanes belonging to, amongst others, the Montreal Light Aeroplane Club:

‘flying was an obsession with me. From the first day I watched a [Tiger] Moth disappear beyond the St Lawrence, I knew I was going to be a pilot.’

Very soon, lessons at Bannatyne School for ‘Buzzy’, as he was known, became boring compared to the lure of the airfield and Beurling began playing truant:

‘I’d climb the fence and try to get near the planes, hoping I’d maybe even get a chance to talk to a pilot.’

In the evenings, instead of homework, Beurling would spend his hours building the, ‘newest model aircraft hidden in the bedroom cupboard.’

In 1930, the Lasalle Road Airport closed and air traffic was transferred to the Cartierville airfield close to Mount Royal, home to the Curtiss-Reid Flying School. This was too great a daily journey for the 9-year-old Beurling and he had to content himself to visiting on Saturdays only, or whenever he could save the money for the streetcar:

‘I’d be at the field whenever I could, just hanging around, watching and hoping. Then, all of a sudden, the dream came true.’

Beurling must have been noticed by the staff and pilots at Cartierville, but no-one challenged him and asked why he wasn’t at school, and why he was hanging around all the time. In fact, no-one ever spoke to him until a chance encounter during the summer holidays when he was 10-years-old.

He was at Cartierville airfield when a thunderstorm began and he was seen by one of the pilots, Ted Hogan, huddled against a wall, sheltering from the worst of the rain. A bush pilot and instructor, Hogan took pity on Beurling and called him into the dry. Ted must have seen the youngster about the airfield before, and the two soon began talking about airplanes and flying. With the storm passed, it was time for Ted to get back to work. As Beurling departed, Ted promised to take him up some time, but only if he could get his mother’s permission first.

Racing back home, the excited Beurling had to wait for his moment to ask his mother if he could go flying. His mother believed that the story was wishful thinking on Beurling’s behalf, and so she said yes.

Beurling was waiting outside the hangar early the following morning, long before any of the aircraft were out on the apron. Within minutes of Ted’s arrival, he had gone through his pre-flight checks and the pair were airborne:

‘and I was a flier for the rest of my time, no matter what happened. From now on the world would never be the same again!’

Seeing that George might have potential as a pilot, Ted found him odd jobs to do around the hangars; everything from cleaning the airplanes, to pumping aviation fuel. His reward was time in the second seat. Gradually, he built up his hours as a passenger in Ted’s Rambler, observing how he coaxed the aircraft through even the trickiest manoeuvres and, by his twelfth birthday, Beurling had ‘felt the controls.’

In late 1935, when he was fourteen, George began scraping money together for flying lessons, by selling newspapers and making model airplanes, which he sold to local children. Once he had raised the $10 it cost for an hour’s dual-control, Beurling would head for the airfield and one of the instructors, ‘Fizzy’ Champagne. In the meantime, Ted Hogan would give Beurling free lessons whenever he had the time, and it was under dual instruction with Ted that he first learned to perform rolls, side-slips and a few stunts.

After nearly two years of flying as and when he could, Beurling was able to persuade his father to finance the few lessons that would see him to his next landmark. With snow on the ground, the Rambler had been fitted with skis, making for smoother take-offs and landings on frozen soil. Beurling’s first solo flight was made in 1938. He followed his instructions and took off, before making two circuits and, after a clean approach, made a safe landing.

Beurling was always ambitious and, not surprisingly, he didn’t wait too long before trying his hand at solo aerobatics. During his fourth flight, with only one-and-a-half solo hours on a Rambler under his belt, Beurling pulled off some rolls and loops:

‘Yanking the stick hard back and kicking on full rudder to throw the little crate over in a flick roll.’

Not only had Beurling let his exuberance get the better of him, but he had committed the cardinal sin of doing so within sight of the aerodrome. One of the flying school instructors was waiting for him on landing and Beurling was told, in no uncertain terms, that any repetition would be his last flight in one of the flying school’s aircraft.

From then on Beurling made sure he flew well out of sight before performing some of the aerobatics he’d mastered under Ted Hogan’s tuition; on one occasion making a spin in the Rambler from 2,500 to 1,000ft while over Lake St Louis:

‘I closed the throttle and started to ease the control column back. As the nose came up over the horizon, and the flying speed began to fall away to almost nothing, I kicked on right rudder and over we fell.’

Beurling followed Ted’s instructions and centred the controls to bring the aircraft out of the right-hand spin. Meanwhile, the ground was getting ever closer:

‘so to help her along, I gave her a bit of opposite rudder, and out she came.’

Growing in confidence, Beurling now tried his luck with a loop in the slow-flying Rambler:

‘[I] shoved the nose down and dived until I had built up a speed of 160 miles an hour. Then I yanked the stick back into my stomach and around we went.’

The aircraft was a less than willing partner in the manoeuvre, straining under the G-Force, but it just about pulled through without anything separating.

Struggling to regularly raise the $10 needed to build up sufficient flyingtime to gain his private pilot’s certificate, Beurling resolved that he would leave Verdun High School and find a job. Naturally Beurling’s parents had his future already planned for him. His mother wanted him to become a doctor, his father a commercial artist. But for Beurling, there was only ever going to be flying.

Beurling’s focus at school had been mathematics, at which he excelled, along with geography and meteorology. All were disciplines which had to be mastered by an aviator. Having completed the ninth grade, struggling through his exams with an average of fifty-seven per cent, Beurling decided to opt out.

Eventually his parents relented and he found employment with the RCA-Victor radio factory in Montreal, receiving a wage of 28 cents an hour. It had been an uneasy struggle and, not long after leaving school, Beurling moved out of his parent’s house, renting a room close to the plant for $1.50 a week. Basic living expenses amounted to a further $1.75, leaving Beurling about $10 a week, the cost of an hour’s flying. Every now and then Beurling managed to find work at the airfield to add to his flying hours, while Ted Hogan continued to help in whatever way he could.

Beurling continued to work at the radio factory until February 1939, by which time he had begun to get very frustrated; it seemed as though he would never qualify for his certificate simply because he couldn’t achieve the required hours flying time.

Ted Hogan suggested that he travel to a place called Gravenhurst in Ontario, where he had a contact, called Smith Langley, who ran a freight contract flying Curtiss Robins (a three-seat cabin monoplane) into the Rouyn goldfields. Langley needed a second pilot, so Hogan made a call and put in a good word for Beurling; if he could make his way out to Gravenhurst, then the job was his. Beurling couldn’t afford a rail ticket and so decided to ‘ride the rails’. He flew the Curtiss Robin on the Gravenhurst-Rouyn run for a full six weeks, putting in enough hours to earn his permit, which he gained on 16 April 1939; the equivalent to gaining his private pilot’s licence.

When the work in Gravenhurst dried up, Beurling made his way to Toronto and then onto Merrit, British Columbia, to visit his maternal uncle. Beurling had set himself the goal of going to America to join a group of fliers, known as the 1st American Volunteer Group of the Chinese Army, bound for action in China’s armed struggle against Japan. His uncle, impressed by Beurling’s commitment, gave him the financial support he needed. Beurling left with a cheque for $500, which he decided to use to help build up his flying time in order to make his log book look more impressive.

Travelling by rail to Vancouver, Beurling made straight for the Sea Island Airport and the Len Foggen Flying School. Here he purchased fifty hours of flying time and, by the end of June 1939, he had amassed 120 solo hours.

In an attempt to join the 1st American Volunteer Group of the Chinese Army (otherwise known as the Flying Tigers) and fight against the Japanese, Beurling illegally crossed the border into America, resulting in his arrest in Seattle by the US immigration authorities. Held in custody for two months, Beurling was released and put onboard a train bound for Montreal on 1 September, the day Hitler’s forces invaded Poland.

With the outbreak of war, Beurling tried to enlist into the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF), but his lack of academic qualifications led to his rejection. He then tried to join the Finnish Air Force, which was fighting the Soviets in the Winter War. He gained an interview with the consul who, having studied his log book, confirmed that he would be welcomed into their air force, but he was a little too young and could not persuade his parents to sign the consent form.

However, his father relented and agreed to go with him to the RCAF Recruiting Centre in Montreal, where he sat in on an informal interview with a more senior officer, who confirmed that the Service was bound by its regulations and that they stipulated the minimum educational requirements. Beurling’s flying certificate and well over 100 hours solo made no difference.

In truth, the RCAF at that time was too small and was unable to accept the numbers of volunteers that were coming forward. To be enlisted for training as a fighter pilot, a recruit had to be amongst the very elite.

A disconsolate Beurling returned to RCA-Victor while he tried to work out his next move, paying a visit to his friend, Ted Hogan, to look for advice. Ted reasoned that the war would be a long one of attrition and that Beurling’s time would come.

With Ted Hogan’s assistance, Beurling began a fairly intensive programme to sharpen up his flying skills and push himself to a new level. Together, they worked on his weaknesses, while Ted supported him in catching up on missed schooling.

By the following spring, George had 250 solo flying hours and had studied all of the aviation textbooks that he could access. Enthusiasm once again got the better of Beurling and, in May 1940, he was caught flying aerobatics and received a one month ban from Cartierville.

Meanwhile, his uncle, Gus Beurling, recalled that, knowing he was going to be an air fighter, Beurling and a friend had gained some experience firing an old Vickers machine gun. Beurling studied the bullet’s trajectory, getting a ‘feel’ for how they were deflected by the prevailing wind and by the forces of gravity. He followed the arch of his fire and was able to adjust his aim accordingly.

Beurling was still itching to enlist. He read in a local newspaper that the RAF were looking for experienced pilots and decided, on the spur of the moment, to make his way across the Atlantic. He talked his way into the crew of a Swedish vessel, the Valparaiso, a munitions ship heading in convoy for Glasgow.

Steaming down the St Lawrence, they waited at anchor at an east coast port until the convoy had assembled. Seventy merchantmen set sail line astern, flanked by their escort, on a voyage which would take a full eighteen days before they reached their final destination. Nearing Ireland, however, they came under attack by German U-boats, losing seven ships torpedoed in a frantic action which lasted only ten minutes:

‘The rest of us made the Clyde right side up and the Valparaiso tied up in the Queen’s Dock.’

Having persuaded the Captain to sub him a pound against his $30 a month wages (with $75 War Risk pay), Beurling gathered his things together and jumped ship. The first person he encountered as he reached the end of the gangplank was a policeman, whom he asked for directions. A brisk walk and a ‘streetcar’ away, Beurling found himself outside the RAF Recruitment Centre in Glasgow.

Beurling was able to gain an interview which went well and he was on the verge of being signed up. The friendly flight lieutenant listening to his story said:

‘Splendid, splendid. Now let me see your papers.’

Beurling explained how last-minute his decision to sail had been and that he would send for his civilian log book.

‘Oh, it’s not the log book that worries me old chap,’ was the reply, ‘but your birth certificate. What about your birth certificate?’

He went on to explain that it was one of the requirements of entry to the Service to have an official copy of a recruit’s birth certificate. The conversation went round and round in circles, but there was no way past this stumbling-block.

‘Too bad, you know, old boy, but I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to go back and get it.’

With these words echoing around in his head, a disconsolate Beurling walked out of the office. He had to act quickly. If he was to achieve his goal, Beurling had no choice, he’d have to sneak back onboard the Valparaiso before he was missed, recross the Atlantic, and collect his log book and birth certificate, before embarking on the hazardous crossing once again.

The return voyage proved eventful and the convoy was bombed before they had even left the Clyde. With the Germans monitoring their progress, further attacks followed, and on day three they were targeted by a U-boat, which slightly damaged the Valparaiso’s hull with a ‘glancing blow by a torpedo.’ Rather than head back for repairs, the Captain kept the Valparaiso on course, maintaining her position in the convoy.

Beurling later recalled:

‘Somehow we limped across the Atlantic, up the St Lawrence and into harbour at Montreal, which we reached on August 3rd (1940).’

Here, Beurling was signed off and collected his pay. Before leaving, he arranged to sign up for the ship’s next crossing, rushing home in the meantime to collect his documentation. Turning up at home unannounced gave his mother a start:

‘Why, George Beurling, where on earth have you been?’

Having explained himself to his parents, both finally agreed that if George was determined to enlist with the RAF, then they would not stand in his way. He spent his shore-leave at home, before heading back to Montreal. Beurling hired a car and