ISBN 0-7524-2037-2
146 pages

Preface; photos; maps; Epilogue; Acknowledgements

   Hidden Victory is a softcover reprint of Tony Dudgeon's 1991 book from Airlife, originally titled The War that Never Was. This edition adds sixteen pages of photos (compared to none at all in the first edition) but otherwise remains unchanged.
   Although technically an independent nation after the First World War, Iraq in practice was largely controlled by the British through treaty obligations and local "advisors" to the Iraqi government. At the beginning of April 1941 the nationalist, pan-Arabist, anti-colonialist regime of Rashid Ali seized power. The new regime sought to impose a strictly minimalist interpretation of its treaty obligations at the same time the British government wanted more liberal basing and transit rights. This collision of attitudes led to one of the most interesting sideshows of the Second World War.
   On the night of 29/30 April 1941 Iraqi troops surrounded the British airbase at Habbaniya. The heavily out-numbered defenders—a few hundred British troops, levies of local "Assyrian" forces, a few RAF armored cars, and about 80 obsolete aircraft—and their families dug slit trenches at the airfield while the Iraqis lobbed artillery shells at them from the nearby heights. What happened next was a fascinating mixture of Fort Apache, stiff upper lips, and colonial soldiering from the Victorian era where every man's individual exertions played a huge role in deciding the fate of battles, wars, and nations.
   Dudgeon was a squadron leader with the training establishment at Habbaniya, and he recounts in vivid detail what happened, and what it was like being there, when the RAF launched its own counter-offensive against the Iraqi army with hastily converted training aircraft and rookie pilots. His recollections include much personal musing about the other men there (such as the elderly engineer with this tale of woe: "I reckon...that I'm unlucky. In the First World War, when I was abroad, some bastard put my wife in a family way. Now, in this flaming war, here I am, stuck on my own in this misbegotten country—and some new bastard has gone and put my daughter in a family way...."), about combat operations in general, and about his own flying.
   The result is a classic story of the sort of adventure that seems to belong to another age entirely, with the added bonus of exciting air-to-air combat.

   Although shells were falling all over the camp, the Iraqi gunners never targeted the hospital—which had a large red-cross on its roof. The aircraft on the polo-pitch were comparatively fortunate. The line of trees hid their landing and parking areas and they could actually get their wheels off the ground before the enemy gunners caught sight of them. My three flights, Gordons, Gladiators and Oxfords, were horribly exposed at the edge of the airfield and not so lucky. Take-offs and landings on the airfield, after daylight spread, had to be made in plain view of the gunners.
   There is a vulgar air force expression which is 'split-arse'. It has the meanings 'clever clever' and 'risk-taking'. Hair-raising might be a more couth term. Being 'split' is normally a punishable offence. Now, our lives depended on it.
   In an Oxford, it went something like this. After completing the cockpit checks in the shelter of the hangars I looked to an airman, positioned to one side and hidden from the plateau, but who could see the airfield. He would give the all clear if another machine was not on its way in and about to scoot round the corner of the hangars, back into comparative safety. Juggling with throttles and brakes, the machine would be made to sweep out, into view of the enemy guns, engines flat out, squirting through the open gate in the camp fence and already doing 30mph before we even reached the airfield's edge. The instant I had just enough flying speed, drag her off the ground, drop a wing and pull her round, away from the plateau in the steepest turn I dared to make. Then, take a deep breath, throttle back a little bit, retract the wheels (only in an Oxford of course; no one else had retractable wheels) and pile on height before seeking out the targets. We then bombed from 1,000 feet for maximum accuracy. Landing was an equally crazy bunch of hazards, based wholly on the sentiment 'what is the least dangerous thing to do?'
   The Audaxes had a different set of problems. Getting off was comparatively simple. They could start up and line up for take-off out of sight of the enemy They came into view when they were already well on their way. Landing was not so easy. The polo pitch/golf-course space was relatively small. Most of the pilots motored in, below tree-top height, just above the Euphrates river; this path took them along the opposite side to the airfield and away from the Iraqi-occupied plateau beyond it. Then, at a precise point, they could lift up a few feet to clear the trees and swing round in a tight turn to finish just short of, and pointing at, the landing-area; Cut the power, swish-tail hard to lose surplus speed—and make a neat landing.
   Our lot had different problems, at least so far as the less-agile Gordons and Oxfords were concerned. I devised and used an approach to the main airfield that could, at best, be classed as bizarre. As soon as Prickett called 'Last bomb gone!', my solution was to swing the aircraft away from the plateau's machine-guns and pom-poms, and disappear, over the river, on the far side of the camp. From there, sneak in very low down indeed, seeking and getting the best cover possible from buildings and trees alongside the roads. Turn in between the hangars—to frustrate the pom-poms—and bank smartly right to land on the taxi-strip beside the airfield fence. Brake hard—and swing in through the gate still doing about 20mph and, swish round behind the hangars again—and stop. My first approach turned out reasonably well and I had not been hit. It promptly became the pattern for all my pilots working off the airfield under shell-fire.
   Naturally, the Iraqis soon came round to the other side of the river, taking pot-shots with rifles and machine-guns at the aircraft flying past them, low and slow over the water, about fifty yards from their noses. Our army promptly set up rifles and machine guns on our side of the river. Very soon, any Iraqi opposite found it most unhealthy to try and draw a bead on an aircraft. So they left again.
   We, the aircrew, were only too well aware that we had nothing, just nothing, which could stop a tank driving up to the front door of AHQ—except our bombs. Hence we knew our very survival depended on, in effect, knocking out every offensive weapon or vehicle before the Iraqis could pull themselves together and bring it to bear effectively. And to keep on, and on, without respite till they left—which thank goodness should be within hours, as Smart had confidently told us. This drove us into a routine which was to fly, fly, fly in any offensive aircraft we could get our hands on. We bombed, and gunned, and looked for other targets. Something had to crack, and it could not be us.
   As soon as any aircraft was back on the ground, one of the two crew-members—we took turns alternately—would report to the Butcher in his ops room, telling him the results and also suggesting suitable new targets which had been spotted during a sortie. Butcher would then plot both bits of information on the latest photo-map that I had produced for him, and allot the crewman his next target. While that was going on the other crewman—pilot, or pupil acting as bomb-aimer—would help reload the machine and make a quick check for any additional damage which was worse than superficial. 'Superficial' meant any new hole (where a bullet or piece of shrapnel had gone through) which did not appear to have damaged something important—like a main-spar, an oil pipe, or a control-hinge. Usually, this would all be done with the engines still running. Surprisingly, no one got clouted by a spinning prop. When the first chap came back from the ops room with the new targets, off they went again.
   After their crash-courses the pupils, acting as bomb-aimers and rear-gunners, quickly became remarkably accurate—even if some of the bombing-run corrections were a bit garbled at first. Not like Prickett's placid and experienced—'Left, left...Steady...Right...Steady...' and ending up with a flat 'Bombs gone'—which I was hearing as the tracers flicked by. More like, to begin with: 'Left, left...Right...Right...RIGHT...LEFT, LEFT!!! Oh Christ, bombs gone...Sir.' However, they all did a fabulous, dangerous and courageous job. And soon they became highly proficient.
   Ground-fire was both intense and accurate. Over the plateau, the Oxfords were cruising at about 1,000 ft. One would fly steadily on a bombing-run (as was essential with those old-fashioned bomb-sights), sitting and watching bullet-holes being punched up through the wings from underneath. Most aircraft received several bullet strikes through the cockpit itself. The dive-bombing and machine-gunning Audaxes went far lower than we did. Every machine was damaged to some extent but the record went to an Audax flown by Flight Lieutenant Dan Cremin. He brought his aircraft back from a single ten minute sortie with fifty-two new bullet holes in it. Miraculously, he had no bullet-holes through his person, but his pupil-gunner was less fortunate. He was carted off to hospital, seriously wounded.
   For man or machine the rule was the same: minor damage, or minor wounds that were not incapacitating, keep cracking. No respite—no breaks. Anyone who had no more than a flesh wound returned to the attack as fast as the planes could be re-armed and re-crewed. The terms 'minor-damage', or 'flesh-wounds' might have been stretched a bit and not assessed in a normal RAF manner—but then our situation was far from normal.

   This kind of high-spirited eye-witness account fits right in with a couple of other books about the action in Iraq in 1941, including The Golden Carpet by Somerset De Chair and The Story of the Arab Legion by John Glubb. As with most first-hand accounts, however, sometimes the facts can be garbled a little by fallible memories. Dudgeon himself notes his own "...sometimes debatable recollections...." and that's especially true when comparing his accounts of some of the air-to-air actions with more meticulously researched accounts in Dust Clouds in the Middle East by Christopher Shores.
   Despite a patch or two where Dudgeon's memory doesn't seem to precisely match the historical record, this is a fascinating, flavorful little book of derring-do in a dusty corner of World War II. Recommended.
   Available from online booksellers, local bookshops, or directly from Tempus Publishing.
   Thanks to Tempus for providing this review copy.