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Battle of Britain | Feature


Pilot Jack gave his life defending our country


EIGHTY years ago, the Battle of Britain raged in the skies over Maidstone. Gordon Stephenson pays tribute to his relative, Spitfire pilot Sgt Jack Ramshaw, who did not survive the fierce aerial contest which shaped the course of World War II…


I HAD been brought up by tales of war-time exploits and heroism, fuelled by my late father, who had served in the Royal Air Force as a fitter in WWII. I remember him quite clearly


taking me to the local cinema in Hull to see the classic 1969 film “The Battle of Britain”, and his stories from that period were constantly recycled and perhaps, dare I say, embellished each time he recounted them. So when my uncle George Ramshaw, now 90 years of age, informed me a few years ago that the son of my great uncle and aunt was a Spitfire pilot who was shot down in the Battle of Britain it sparked my curiosity. Slowly but surely, I have man-


aged to piece together the jigsaw that was his life. John William Ramshaw, known as Jack, was born in 1916 in Beverley, East Yorkshire. As a boy he attended Spencer Street Council School and won a schol- arship to attend Beverley Gram- mar School between 1927 and 1934. He then started to work as a


clerk at the Halifax Building So- ciety in Hull. Jack’s passion, however, was


flying. He took up private flying lessons at the Hull Aero Club in 1936 and joined the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve in 1937 to continue his training at Brough. He gained his RAF fly- ing badge in 1938. In April 1940, he was at Aston


Down for conversion onto fighter aircraft, probably the Hurricane, and the following month, he joined 222 squadron, first at RAF Digby for further fighter training and then at Kirton in Lindsey in Lincolnshire. His time there was spent pre- dominantly intercepting enemy aircraft heading across the North East coast towards the industrial cities of Yorkshire. As the Battle of Britain became more intense, his squadron was moved to RAF


Please spare a minute at 1.35pm on September 4, to think about Jack, the ‘pal, man and hero’


“


Hornchurch, on August 29, 1940. The squadron operations


record book shows that the very next day, Jack was on patrol in Spitfire P9360 over Gravesend and Dover. Two further sorties took place on September 2, over Chatham, Hawkinge and Manston in Spitfire K9939. On the morning of September


4, the weather was fine and warm with occasional haze in the En- glish Channel. Jack had a morning sortie in Spitfire P9962 (his nephew be- lieves it was the aircraft’s first day back with the squadron after extensive repairs) and landed at 10.10am without seeing any enemy action. Just over two hours later, at 12.35pm, orders were received to intercept an enemy raid ap-


proaching Canterbury from the south. At 27,000ft, a formation of Messerschmitt ME109s was sighted and engaged. An ensuing dog fight occurred, during which it is believed, from eyewitness re- ports, that Jack had engine failure at 20,000ft. Whilst trying to force land without power, he was shot at by an ME109, which continued the attack until approximately 200 feet above the ground. Jack’s damaged aircraft landed


”


near the River Teise and Spitzbrook House, close to Yald- ing, at 1.35pm. Jack was rescued from the burning aircraft, but he died on his way to West Kent Hospital. A newspaper article, in the Hull Daily Mail, 54 years after the


event, recalled his sister Peggy’s vivid memories of the day. She tells of how just hours be-


fore Jack was shot down, a tele- gram from him had arrived at his family home in Beverley. He was wishing his younger sister, Jessie, a happy 15th birthday. Forty-five minutes later, a sec-


ond telegram arrived from the Air Ministry, announcing that Jack was dead. Jack was taken home and buried on September 12, 1940, in Queensgate Cemetery in Bever- ley, with full military honours. A large number of Beverley resi- dents attended his funeral to pay their respects. Sadly, alongside his family was his young fiancée Irene. Perhaps after reading this arti-


cle, readers might spare a minute at 1.35pm on September 4 to think about Jack, the “pal, man and hero” as the inscription aptly states on his gravestone, and the many other pilots who, with him, gave their lives that we might live.


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