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George Beurling

Canada’s Highest-Scoring Ace of World War II

George Beurling, known as “Buzz” Beurling, became Canada’s most successful fighter pilot of the war. His interest in flying began at age 6 when his father built him a model airplane. He first took the controls of an airplane at 12, soloed at 14, and was licensed by 17. “Ever since I can remember,” he later wrote, “airplanes and to get up in them into the free sky had been the beginning and end of my thoughts and ambitions.”

With Canada’s entry into World War II in 1938, Beurling tried to get to China to join the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) in the air war over Manchuria but was rejected because he had only a grade-school education. He then tried to join the Finnish Air Force but could not get his parents’ permission. In September 1940, the RAF accepted him as a pilot.
Training in Hawarden, he got the attention of Ginger Lacey, fighter ace with 27 kills, who remarked about Beurling, “There are no two ways about it, he was a wonderful pilot and an even better shot.”

At Hawarden, Beurling immersed himself in gunnery, estimation of range, deflection, and bullet trail and bullet drop, until they were automatic. For him, flying and shooting became one single action. A year later, he qualified as a pilot and earned his wings. In the middle of December 1941, he was posted as a Sergeant Pilot to 403 Squadron, a RCAF squadron, which had just moved to North Weald, Essex. He flew his first combat mission in a Supermarine Spitfire on Christmas Day that year. Beurling escorted bombers and flew fighter sweeps across the English Channel. According to Monty Berger, one of Beurling’s colleagues, Beurling recounted spotting an enemy plane and shooting it down in the fall of 1943: “I knew that if I said anything on the R/T [radio telephone] the chances of our whole section turning around quickly enough weren’t very good,” Beurling told him. “That spot would have disappeared. So I peeled off, climbed and got behind him. I was to his left and behind, and I could see my shots going into the rear of his cockpit. The Fw went down in flames.”

“By golly, the [gun camera] film clearly showed the aircraft being shot down,” Berger said. “He had spotted this dot, peeled off, got behind it and got back into position without anybody knowing what had happened.”

In early 1942, a change in RCAF’s policy required its squadrons to be staffed by RCAF personnel. Because Beurling had remained an RAF member, he was posted to 41 Squadron RAF in Sussex.

Two days later, flying in the number four position, he spotted a lone Fw 190 and broke from the flight to pursue it. He claimed the German fighter as probably destroyed 2 to 3 miles off Cap Gris Nez.  For attacking a target without permission, he was reprimanded, making him unpopular. When another pilot was posted overseas, Beurling offered to take his place. Ordered to board a ship, he did not know his destination until the vessel reached Gibraltar: No. 249 Squadron RAF, at Malta.[

 

 

 

 

 



There he was dubbed “Screwball,” a favorite term of his. In a few short weeks he downed 27 Axis aircraft. A religious, nonsmoking teetotaler who never cursed, George Beurling was indeed a character. Fellow pilot Hugh Godefroy described him as “a tallish slim fellow with a disheveled crop of blond hair, sharp features and deep creases down each cheek . . . He had large ice-blue eyes that rarely blinked.” His squadron leader on Malta, Stanley Grant, described him as “high strung, brash, and outspoken. He was a rebel.” Beurling repeatedly refused promotions and when finally ordered to accept a flight lieutenant’s commission, insisted on continuing to bunk with the sergeants. He could not resist hair-raising stunts to the point of courts-martial. While the base commander lectured pilots on the prohibition of dangerous pranks—a lecture inspired by Beurling’s hijinks—he “buzzed” the lecture hall. On another occasion he shot a tail feather off Godefroy’s pet duck. Discipline and accepting orders were never his strong suits, but his public profile as an ace and a hero protected him from military justice.

By October, Beurling had been shot down several times. Underweight and suffering from dysentery, Beurling had a shrapnel wound in the heel that forced him out of the fight. Remarkably, on the return flight to England, he was one of only three to survive when their Consolidated Liberator overshot the runway at Gibraltar. For the next year he conducted noncombatant tasks. Although Canada’s most visible war hero in 1943, he ruined his fundraising war bond tour by telling a reporter, “One of my can shells caught him in the face and blew his head right off . . . I must say it gives you a feeling of satisfaction when you actually blow their brains out.”

A handful of outrageous incidents established his extraordinary talents. He loved flying right on the deck, swearing he did it best inverted because the blind spot created by the cowling was eliminated when the aircraft was upside down.

At war’s end, Beurling had earned the Distinguished Service Order, Distinguished Flying Cross, and Distinguished Flying Medal & Bar and was credited with 31 victories. Finding himself at odds with civilian life, he yearned for dogfighting. “I would give 10 years of my life to live over again those six months I had in Malta in 1942,” he told a reporter, adding, “…combat, it’s the only thing I can do well; it’s the only thing I ever did that I really liked.”

In 1948, Beurling was recruited to fly P-51 Mustangs for the Israeli Air Force. After a test flight, Beurling crashed his Noorduyn Norseman transport while landing at Aeroporto dell’Urbe in Rome in May of that year. He died, along with fellow Malta pilot Leonard Cohen. The accident occurred six days after Israel had established its independence. The initial report noted that the bodies were burned beyond recognition. Beurling's widow, family, and friends did not attend his funeral in Rome. On a small brass plate over the lid of the coffin were the words “Colonel Georgio Beurling.”

Because no one claimed his body, Beurling’s coffin was kept for three months in a warehouse in the Verano Monumental Cemetery. Then his widow, Diana Whittall Gardner, had him buried in the Protestant Cemetery behind the Cestia Pyramid between the graves of Percy Bysshe Shelley and John Keats. In November 1950, two and half years after his death, Beurling's casket arrived at Israel’s Haifa Airport. His coffin, draped with the blue and white Israeli flag, was laid in a nearby air force base, where an honour guard of airmen stood silent watch. During the long funeral in the streets of Haifa, Israeli Air Force aircraft paid homage to Beurling. He was finally re-interred in the military cemetery at the foot of Mount Carmel.

George Beurling paints crosses on superm
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