1942 until 1947
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| My life in the Royal Airforce in England during the war. 1942 until 1947 |
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| 1943 after receiving my commision as a Pilot Office. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Having graduated from Heles School Exeter in September 1941, at the age of 17 I enrolled in the RAFVR via a short course at Oxford.University in England | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| During the last years at Heles since the war started in 1939 I enrolled in the school Air Defence Cadet Corps, and became top sergeant. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| We went to Exeter Airport to help in the weekend with the Polish fighter pilots stationed there at that time. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| While waiting to go to Oxford now more than sixty years ago my brother Axel Pilot Office Svendsen flew the squadrons Magister aircraft across England to Exeter Airport in March 1942. The Magister was a two seater open cockpit aircraft used for training by the squadron pilots in their spare time. At Exeter he picked me up and flew me to his squadron base at Manston airport on the east coast of England. This was my first flight and I look back on this as the beginning of my love of flying doing so with my elder brother at the controls of a small open cockpit aircraft. Oh what fun as he dived down over our home at Grassway to say farewell as we flew on towards the east coast all across an England suffering from the losses at Dunkirk, | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| I kept on my ADCC uniform to avoid attention as civilians were not allowed in the sensitive East Coast area. After spending three thrilling days with him and his squadron friends, in particular the famous Joergen Thalbitzer whose fantastic escape from a prisoner of war camp after he was shot down is recorded in several books. The Hurricane squadron that Axel was attached to was at that time engaged in looking for the German battleship Bismark reported on its way up the English Channel for a safe haven in Norway. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Axel with his Hurricane Manston 1942. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| With Axel at Manston March 1942 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ��������Last picture of Axel March 1942 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Unfortunately the local police caught up with me and I was escorted to the railway station to return to Exeter with a severe reprimand not to return again. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Jorgen Thalbitzer who was shot down the week after Axel but escaped from the POW camp and returned to Denmark. He was drowned during his escape from Denmark to Sweden. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Axel with Jorgen Thalbitzer at Manston 1942.They were great friends and trained together and manned the first of the three spitfires donated by Free Danes to Churchill | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| On April 2ist 1942 two days before his 20th birthday on April 24th 1942 Axel went missing after a sweep over Northern France. He was eventually presumed dead. Many efforts after the war to ascertain his fate have so far not succeeded.He is comemorated in the Tangmere Museum where our eldest brother has donated a full size replica of the Spitfire that Axel was shot down in. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||