Legendary RAF pilot Harry Garthwaite heroically shot down Nazi planes on D-Day despite a devastating phobia
RAF pilot Harry Garthwaite flew hundreds of missions over battle-scarred Europe during World War Two.
He was in the cockpit of an astonishing 23 different planes, from fighters to bombers — and even a German aircraft which, as he put it, “Somehow came into my possession”.
Pilot Officer Garthwaite was at D-Day, flew on undercover ops in the lead-up to the invasion in June 1944 and witnessed the horrors of one of Hitler’s death camps.
But incredibly, Harry who has died aged 104, could not stand heights.
I’m terrified on the top of a ladder.
RAF pilot Harry Garthwaite on his phobia
This brave man, who spent 2,231 hours on deadly operations in the skies over France, Belgium, Holland and Germany, admitted: “I’m terrified on the top of a ladder.”
Yesterday, a spokesman for the Normandy Veterans Family And Friends group confirmed that widower Harry died peacefully at home in Solihull, West Mids.
Just three months ago he was well enough to meet Sophie, Duchess of Edinburgh, at a ceremony to commemorate the 80th anniversary of D-Day, June 6, 1944.
Back then, Harry, who had just celebrated his 24th birthday, flew top-ranking colonels and generals to secret locations to plan the Allied invasion of France.
He and his crew were told to report to RAF Hawkinge near Dover in Kent.
Harry recalled: “I was taken into the Squadron Leader’s office and told it was ‘likely to be Invasion Day’.
“We were to fly senior Army officers to airfields near strategic points involved in the D-Day operation.
“Within minutes, I was sitting in the pilot’s seat of my Avro Anson plane — known as the “Flying Greenhouse” — with the engine running. All six passenger seats were full.
Crash-landed
“A few minutes later, we heard the airport Tannoy system kick in and a passenger, Colonel Barrett, asked me to turn the engine off.
“We heard the Tannoy announce that the invasion had started and the first landing had just been achieved. No one spoke in the aircraft.”
Harry spent the rest of the morning flying top brass along the South Coast where he saw thousands of soldiers being launched towards France in sky tugs and gliders.
In the lead-up to the biggest seaborne invasion in history, Harry had flown many experts and officers to locations that were so secret they “did not exist” officially.
Harry, who at 18 had quit a job in an insurance office in West Hartlepool, Co Durham, to join the RAF, got his job flying senior officers following a spell as a weather spotter for the Met Office.
He said: “In those days, the only way to find out what the weather was doing somewhere was to go and look.
“We had to fly over some of the most protected German areas, as that was where most of the special operations were aimed.
“And we had to fly in all weathers, even when the majority of planes would be grounded. These two drawbacks made life exciting.
“We were instructed to hide whenever possible and never engage with German aircraft unless they attacked us.
“We hid using clouds, mountains and low altitude over the sea.
“We still did engage with some German fighters but managed to fight them off.
“The Blenheim that we used had forward-facing guns and four fully rotating guns in a turret just behind.
“Thank heaven I had a brilliant crew with an awesome turret gunner.”
My survival in those days was down to good luck and my ability to know how to hide my plane from the Germans.
Once when flying back to England, both his Bristol Blenheim bomber’s engines cut out, the plane rapidly lost height and crash-landed on the South Coast.
His crew escaped with broken bones and cuts.
Harry said: “Just after we crashed we could hear vehicles approaching.
“I was helping my navigator to free his foot from the wreckage when a voice shouted, ‘Navigator — report’.
“I looked out and saw the chap on a motorcycle who collected the weather reports dismount and run towards us.
“My navigator gave me the weather report.
“I leant down out of the cockpit and gave it to the chap, who grabbed it, turned and sped off without another single word.
“Seconds later the ambulances, fire engines and rescue team arrived and carefully took us away.
“We then realised just how critical those reports were for the Armed Services to make plans.”
On another occasion, flying back from France, they saved the lives of a four-man RAF Wellington bomber crew who had ditched in the sea, by alerting rescue teams.
Harry said: “A few days later my squadron leader took me aside and told me that I had risked serious charges by getting involved and not bringing the report back ASAP.
“He then shook my hand again and said, ‘But I would have expected no less’, and winked.”
Less than 100 hours after D-Day, Harry was flying to France, dropping off Army officers to the front line.
He said: “I was constantly at risk of meeting German fighter planes or receiving enemy ground fire due to my low altitude.
“My survival in those days was down to good luck and my ability to know how to hide my plane from the Germans, which I’d learnt when doing special ops for the Met Office.
Mass graves
“The flights got longer and longer as we delivered all the personnel, essential equipment and mail.
“It wasn’t very pleasant in Antwerp because there were still numerous doodlebugs and V2s [flying bombs] exploding all over.
“As we forced our way further into Germany, I entered the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp only a few hours after liberation.
“Hideously thin, freed prisoners were wandering around, and mass graves — about 20,000 bodies in each of many huge earth-covered mounds — were being uncovered.
“It was incredibly traumatic for me to experience and one of only two times during the entire war that my eyes shed tears.
“Over the following days I realised Germany had effectively lost the war and would have to surrender soon.”
For the rest of the war Harry ferried senior officers to Europe and returned to base with wounded soldiers.
My skills were flying small aircraft to their limits, so I was lucky I was in a plane and not in a trench or ship.
In October 1945 he gave evidence to the Luneburg war crimes court where 45 former SS personnel from the Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz concentration camps were on trial.
Of the 23 types of aircraft that Harry flew during his seven years in the RAF, he said: “My favourite fighter was the Hurricane.
“It wasn’t quite as fast as a Spitfire, but it was reliable when you abused it and a lot easier to land in strong winds.
“My favourite plane with a crew was, by far, the Blenheim.”
After the war Harry returned to West Hartlepool and married wife Maisie, who died in 2015, aged 92.
They have one son, David.
In his online memoirs, Harry wrote: “People often ask me why I continued to do some of the very risky things that I did do.
“What got me out of my bunk and into my cockpit every day was believing three facts — one, if I hadn’t obeyed orders I would have been court-martialled.
“Two, my skills were flying small aircraft to their limits, so I was lucky I was in a plane and not in a trench or ship.
“Three, we all knew that if we gave in, the world would be dominated and destroyed by Germany.
“Many years later, I now realise that . . .
“Fact one stopped me having alternative thoughts.
“Fact two was not always correct, I was just lucky.
“Fact three was what kept me going . . . and alive.”
- Harry Garthwaite was supported by Blind Veterans UK.