Squadron Leader BG Stapleton

Against Unfavourable Odds

Flying Officer Wells, Pilot Officer Stapleton, Sgt DA Helcke and Sgt TY Wallace survived different incidents that day. Wells was shot down and posted “Missing”, Stapleton crash landed in a Kent field to the consternation of a picnicking couple, No 504 Helcke shot down an He 111 and Wallace “baled out” after an Me109 exchange 23.

Against Unfavourable Odds

Basil Gerald Stapleton, born in Durban and educated at King Edward School in Devon, commissioned at the same time as Petrus Hendrik Hugo. He joined No 603 Squadron on July 1st, served throughout the “Battle of Britain”, accounted for six Luftwaffe aircraft and earned the “Distinguished Flying Cross”.

Against Unfavourable Odds

Stapleton volunteered for the “Merchant Ship Fighter Unit” at RAF Speke in Liverpool flying adapted Hurricanes off Merchant Ships, with former “General Botha” Cadet, Flight Lt AJ Hay. Captured after a forced Hawker Typhoon landing in 1944, Stapleton spent five months as a “POW”. He joined BOAC as a pilot after the war, “returned” to South Africa for over forty years, relocated to England in 1994 and died in 2010.

The Dreaded Telegram

Pilot Officer A Greenberg, one of the 22, was killed during flying training on March 3rd, 1940, when engine failure caused his No 224 Squadron Hudson to crash. The first of 49 South Africans serving in the RAF who lost their lives during 1940, Albert Aaron Greenberg, a contemporary of Norman Lewis’s at King Edwards was confirmed as a Pilot Officer in the December 28th “London Gazette” in a list including Peter Grenfell Dexter, Pieter Hendrik Hugo and Basil Gerald Stapleton.

The Airmen who started at Sea

Thirty-five merchant ships had narrow 26 m long flat building crane like structures fitted to their bows, carrying an adapted Hurricane, support crew and pilot with many aircraft and volunteers like Durban born BG Stapleton, being “Battle of Britain” veterans.