Page 79 - Demo

79RAF Sport Parachuting Association was formed in 1960 the pilot of our venerable Rapide was a Czech who had escaped and come to England in 1940. A competent pilot, with combat experience, he joined the RAF but his English was very poor so, rather than enlisting him as a pilot, they made him a signaller %u2013 a communicator! 3B%u0006 %u0009(B%u0016%u0006 %u000e%u0013&<%u0006 %u000b%u0017%%u0013/? With respect to foreigners serving with the RAF, what happened with Air Publications and the like? Were APs translated into foreign languages, or were they interpreted by cadres of linguists working at the coal face? %u000b(-(.(8? It was a bit of both. The intention was certainly that personnel should be trained to have a grasp of English sufficient to do the job %u2013 whatever that job was. Some manuals were translated into foreign languages, chiefly those intended for aircrew. %u0001%u0015&*(%-%u0006%u0019(%u0016%u0017)%u0013/? In May 1939 Gp Capt John Slessor, then Director of Plans at the Air Ministry, was approached by the Foreign Office over the possibility of recruiting veteran Civil War pilots from among the 2,000 Spanish personal of all ranks being held in a French internment camp at Perpignan. Nothing came of this, one reason being that RAF commissions were only granted to men, both of whose parents were British nationals. By 1940 this hurdle had fallen, one example being Brig8Gen Lodomil Raysky. Until March 1939 the Inspector General of the Polish Air Force, he was rescued from an internment camp in Scotland at the height of the Battle of Britain by the CAS, Sir Cyril Newall, and given the rank of squadron leader. He ended the war as an air commodore having been decorated with the DSO and Bar and an AFC, making him a possible contender for the title of highest ranking wartime refugee. %u0018%u00177%u0015%u0016%u0016? A comment on the Spanish Civil War airmen %u2013 both pilots and ground personnel. They were not a realistic option because they were almost exclusively communists and could have been expected to follow Moscow%u2019s party line which was, at the time, to undermine the Western war effort. The same was true within the Czech, and to some extent, the Polish contingents and the communists had to be combed out. Post8BARBAROSSA, their credibility was, at least to some extent, restored. %u0004%u0015%%u0006 %u0009-%%u0017%u0006 %u0019%u0015++%u0006 8(&