Spitfire AA810
When we think of WW2 and ‘intelligence’, we likely think of Bletchley Park, or the Special Operations Executive, but millions of real time reports and photographs fed into the strategic planning of the allied campaign, and that was largely down to the unarmed photographic reconnaissance units, without which, the outcome of the war could have been very different.
In July 2018, the wreck of Spitfire AA810 was recovered from a peat bog in Norway. It had been shot down in March 1942 while on a mission with No.1 Photographic Reconnaissance Unit (PRU) to photograph the German battleship Tirpitz. It was crucial to know the whereabouts of this ship as it posed a great threat to the allied Arctic Convoys to Russia. The Spitfire pilot, Sandy Gunn, became a POW, eventually taking part in the Great Escape, though sadly he was captured and executed aged only 24.
Sandy’s story is illustrative of the huge risk run by the PRU pilots. They were completely defenceless as the armour plate and guns were removed from their planes to accommodate the camera and the extra fuel required for their missions. While typically a Spitfire would fly for roughly 90 minutes, the PRU aircraft were in the air for 4 to 5 hours. The unit suffered large losses and the survival rate for the pilots was very low. Nearly 500 men would become casualties flying with the PRU.
The job of the PRU was to provide real time updates on what the enemy were doing, and also to report on things like the weather. This intelligence was interpreted in secret in Buckinghamshire and then passed onto the Cabinet War Rooms for use by Churchill and High Command in their strategic planning.
Sandy was not the only pilot to fly AA810. His was the plane’s 16th operational mission, and it had been flown by several men prior, including: Alfred Fane, Mervyn Jones, Frederick Malcolm, Edward Lee, Robert Tomlinson, William Morgan, Jeffrey Quill, Frank Robinson, Donald Steventon, and Gavin Walker. When the plane was recovered in 2018, about 70% of it was still intact, and so a project was launched by Tony Hoskins to restore the plane to flying condition. The AA810 Project website details the stories of each of its former pilots and talks about the current plans for a monument to the unarmed photo reconnaissance units of the Second World War, which will hopefully be sited near to Churchill War Rooms. The story of the recovery of the plane and its restoration can be read in this BBC News article from 2023. The project website states that it aims to have the plane airworthy by 2027.
Five of the former pilots who flew AA810 were sadly killed during the war, two of whom have no known graves. It is fitting that a monument to the photo reconnaissance units will finally highlight the bravery and sacrifice of the pilots, and acknowledge the crucial role they played in the allied victory.
