High Flying Adored

So this past month I have mostly fallen in love with a pilot. Not just any pilot, I would like to add, but rather a Second World War fighter ace of the most extraordinary kind. Which makes me, unfortunately, a lifetime too late. I don’t stand alone in this regard, in fact I think our entire office have lost their hearts to this incredible young man. To whom do I refer? Let me introduce you to James Archibald Findlay MacLachlan DFO DFC and bars, Czech War Cross. Battle of France and Battle of Britain pilot, perhaps more famously known as ‘One-Armed Mac’. Although remember, I saw him first.

It all began when a rather inconspicuous cardboard box landed at our saleroom some weeks back. In it was the most extraordinary cache of ephemera previously belonging to, and about, the man in question. Flying log books, diaries, photograph albums, scrap books and letters predominantly making up the group. Dipping in, I soon became hooked on the author’s witty outlook, dry sense of humour and boundless enthusiasm. In neat handwriting beneath carefully arranged photographs in a black album, MacLachlan annotates snaps taken from 16,000 feet on his Kodak DUO 620, and others a little closer to earth: ‘Sure I can fly says Lennie - but I’m not so hot on landings!’ is inked beneath two pictures, one being of a Tutor MkI flying high in the clouds, its pilot inclined towards the camera grinning, the other of the same plane crumpled in a field, surrounded by ground crew.

Compiled in 1937 when he was approximately 18, the above album is a riotous look through the eyes of a teenage boy, on the brink of becoming a hero. In one picture, a casual snap of the exterior of the barracks, an assembly of young men in shirtsleeves lounge on the grass waiting for action. One being half propped up, he is flipping the V sign to our amateur photographer, beneath which MacLachlan later added ‘A strenuous afternoon in S, Cerney’. In another he captures a charming picture of ‘Lough’ a young man dressed in full uniform, posing. The telling footnote reads ‘This photo was taken for the girlfriend’. However, perhaps my favourite of all, is one taken mid- flight, MacLachlan holds the camera aloft, at a short distance from his face, clad in googles and helmet, he takes an early ‘selfie’, proving the point that boys will be boys - no matter the century. 

These are his early years, MacLachlan soon grew-up, and honed his skills in a way almost impossible to imagine today. I use the term ‘grew-up’ lightly too, as paradoxically in a way we also find hard to quantify now, James was at once both a boy, and worldly. Defined by a sort of sophistication in his courage, and stoicism in his approach. A natural leader, and someone to whom many looked up to, by 1941 his active service had included France, Great Britain and Malta, and he had already earned a DFC and bar, before his story took an extraordinary twist, of a type usually reserved for fiction. 

Also in amongst MacLachlan’s effects is the most wonderful scrapbook, compiled by himself, documenting this extraordinary event and the following sensation he caused. To the front cover he has pasted a square of paper to which he has added the title ‘Fantasies of the Press’ in typical wry fashion. In it I discovered numerous newspaper clippings, neatly pasted. One from the News Chronicle published on April 27th 1942 caught my attention, and describes the events that changed MacLachlan’s life as they unfolded. I will summarise and quote where necessary. 

Mac's hand-entitled scrap album 

Flying in Malta in the hot spring of 1941, Flight Lieutenant MacLachlan - or Mac as he was by now fondly known to the crew, was doing battle with Messerschmitt GF 109’s. An advanced German aircraft, it was one of the first truly modern fighters, being of all-metal construction. Flying a Hurricane at approximately 20,000 ft above Luca, Mac’s team formed a defensive circle as devised by our pilot as part of their battle plan, when he spotted six 109’s ‘screaming down upon them from the sun’ in an attempt to break the segment where Mac himself was. Moving swiftly, he dropped height, and the Me.’s overshot him. Quickly looking around about him, he could find nothing to see, before spotting a 109 directly in front of him, at some distance. It was hot pursuit of a Hurricane, and MacLachlan joined the chase. He wanted it so badly ‘his hands shook’, for to shoot it down would not only be a success for the squadron - but also for morale - as it would be the first Me. to be shot down over the island. 

His ‘blood was thumping very heavily’ and he was closing in fast. He felt that ‘nothing could stop him now’. Therefore the moment the crash came in his very own cockpit he knew what an awful fool he had been. He had been much too excited to look in the mirror, and now he had made an ‘utterly foolish and perhaps utterly fatal mistake’. A 109 had slipped in behind Mac, and had outfoxed him at his own game. The cockpit was filled with flying metal and the spray of blood, as shells destroyed his control panel. The kite went at once into a dive. On regaining control, Mac found that his left arm had become utterly useless. He recalled quite clearly opening the hood of his aircraft, removing his oxygen mask and standing up in the cockpit. In the following moments, where he watched his aircraft fall away beneath him, engines roaring, soaring to the ground, he felt nothing of pain or anger or fear. He felt liberated, a man alone in the air, quite free ‘in the enormous peaceful space of the sky’.

‘He knew, quite intelligently, that he was upside down.’ He thought how ridiculous it seemed, his legs blocking his upwards view of the action, still continuing above. His arm was beginning to throb furiously. He forced himself to feel for the cord of his parachute. He could not find it, it was not there, and he wondered if it had been torn from him as the plane fell away. He recalled later how clear it all became, ‘how after all it was a simpler, less painful, less horrible business than you had always imagined dying to be. You would fall a very long way and would hit the deck with a very hard thud, but the impact and the pain by that time would no longer matter. Your mother would cry the real pain, the pain of loss, of emptiness, of sacrifice and despair would not be yours - but theirs, and it would be far away, and you would never know.’ 

Finally he made one last ditch attempt to locate the cord, and this time he was triumphant. Pulling it violently, it suddenly felt like he was being hanged - the upwards force of the parachute opening seemed to wrench the upper part of his body away from the rest. His harness tightened and he could not breathe, the wind blew sprays of blood from his wounded arm into his face and he felt distant, the pain of his restricted breathing bearing down upon him. Far below Malta lay spread out ‘like a misty map in the sun’ and all he wanted to do was ‘be there, inanimate, without movement and without pain.’ 

He must have passed out, for he was roused from his stupor by the sound of a plane. It seemed to be bearing down on him and ‘naturally thought that some bloodthirsty Jerry’ had come to finish him off. ‘This was the killing part. To be hung up like a half-dead pheasant on a string, while an Me. with nothing better to do, comes down and circles round you at leisure, firing until you just run out of jelly’. He looked up to find it was a Hurricane, which he later found out was piloted by close friend Eric Taylor. Taylor had anticipated the danger, and provided escort for MacLachlan’s fall, circling him a few times, although MacLachlan was too tired to acknowledge his presence. Instead he tightly clutched his wounded arm, and closed his eyes, drifting away, swinging, feeling like he might be drunk, and the world spinning about him. 

After a spell he opened his eyes again and found that the Hurricane had gone, and that he could see the town beneath more clearly. He felt sick from the swinging, but could do nothing to prevent it, until finally he began to fall faster. He saw the ‘roofs of the town, hot in the sun, flying upwards’, until he began to drift towards the edge of the settlement, and soon it was only the one flat roof of a little house that came rushing up to meet him. Beside the house was a small patch of wheat ‘which was very green’ and which MacLachlan saw shimmer in the wind and the sun just before he hit the ground at full force. 

He tumbled and rolled a few times until he stopped, laying still, in what he thought was his last moment. He felt the ‘sweetness, the calm, the painlessness and the silence of being able to die. It was enough to shut my eyes against the sun and wait for the moment, and myself, to end.’ His peace was rudely interrupted only minutes later by the sound of people running. Surrounded by a crowd of gesticulating Maltese who ‘tore off his ‘cute and held up his head’, much to MacLachlan’s annoyance. He kicked very hard for a short while, just to ‘demonstrate how very living’ he was, before succumbing. He lay emptily on the earth, too tired to fight, with only enough strength to administer his own morphine and tie a tourniquet from a first aid kit the crowd provided.

He had fleeting memories of being carried through the wheat by the crowd, the sky and the blinking sun. He was taken to a field hospital where he was fixed up with whiskey, and sent on to the Imtarfa hospital ‘as drunk as a lord’, where he asked a few nurses out on dates. Two days later they removed his left arm. It had ‘smelt bad’ he recalled, but he was frightened that it’s loss would also spell the end to his days as a pilot. At the hospital he would frighten the nurse with thoughts that he was dying, just so that she would sit with him during the night, keeping him company. 

He needn't have worried. His resilience if nothing else saw him through. Following the amputation he wasted no time in getting back up in the air - he was flying fourteen days later. ‘It started with a bet, I made a bet with the nurse that I’d be flying again within the fortnight. I just managed to bring it off by going up in a Maggie’ (a Magister, a dual control trainer aircraft). He ‘shot-up’ the hospital, flying past with his wing tip not more than 10 feet from the windows: ‘It shook up the sisters - but not nearly as much as it shook up me!’ By the time his mother was reading that he was on the casualties list, he was already back in the air.

He recuperated in East Africa where he got as much flight time under his belt as possible. Back in England all that was left to do was convince the Air Ministry that he was fit for for duty. He experimented, and found that he could still control Hurricanes singlehandedly, albeit on ordinary flying ops. However MacLachlan was determined to get back in the thick of it, and to do so he would need a ‘fighting hand’ to give him more control in active battle. Gradually with the help of his doctor, they developed a robotic arm with adjustable steel fingers to fit any aircraft column, which Mac described as ‘positively wizard’. He was also most proud of the thumb - which came in useful when playing cards. 

Mac’s wish was granted, when on November 4th 1941 the British medical board gave him the ‘all- clear’ for duty. He was ‘beaming with happiness’ as he informed a reporter of the decision - under the newspaper heading ‘One-Armed Ace Plans Next Party’ pasted neatly into his scrapbook. He was posted temporarily as operational leader to No 1 Squadron at Redhill, a prestigious position indeed. The media frenzy was intense, cartoons of his exploits sprang up, and he quickly became the poster boy of fighter pilots. By now he was 21, and had developed dashing good looks. His fair hair worn parted to one side and slicked in place, with a ‘neatly groomed pencil moustache’, and as one American newspaper took great pains to point out - ‘rosy cheeks’ which ‘blushed furiously’ when he talked about his acts of valour. Dubbed the ‘Knight of the Air’, ‘The German Nemesis’ and ‘One-Armed Mac’ a running score of his exploits were printed religiously in the papers. ‘Two more for One-Arm DFC! This New Gadget is a Piece of Cake!’ 

From October 1942 through to April 1943 Mac was posted to the USA on a lecture tour, designed to teach British pilots stationed over there his tried and tested dog-fight methods. He was selected for this delegation, and his letter setting out his duties remains among his things. Point number four: ‘Mix with the cadets, ensure that their discipline and morale are of a high order’. Also among his effects are two paper placemats from ‘The House of Murphy’ in Los Angeles, on which are printed cartoons of Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, and Hideki Tojo, above the slogan ‘If it weren’t for these three sunzabitches you’d be eating off a linen tablecloth!’. 

Just as in Britain, American interest in the young pilot was fierce. The press ran with pictures of him lecturing, his uniform impeccably pressed, his left sleeve tucked beneath his belt. In January 1943 he made light of his situation in the typical warm-hearted and self-deprecating manor which had come to define him; ‘This really hasn't bothered me at all’ he said wryly, gesturing towards his empty sleeve. ‘It’s rather a good line - sympathy you know, and all that. Of course it is a bit tricky when you want to do a bit of wooing’. 

Lecturing in the USA / Receiving the Czech Cross (with false arm)

However MacLachlan was never happier than when in battle, and in April 1943 he returned to work at the Air Fighting Development Unit (ADU) in Wittering. Here they developed operational tactics and tested captured enemy aircraft, and Mac was in his element - designing his own missions, constantly pushing forwards, driven by a determination to outwit the enemy. He had a lot to drive him, his family home in Southampton had been bombed by this time, and his parents, young brother and two sisters had been forced to stay with relatives. Two younger brothers were also serving, Hugh in the Middle East, and Gordon, a fellow fighter pilot. Gordon and Mac, or ‘Baked’ and ‘Jay’ to each other, were very close, and had flown together, once ‘taking up their spitfires and conducting a mock dog-fight’. 

Mac was ferociously proud of his personal, and combined unit success. The pace was frenetic, but his diaries and log books record his lighthearted approach, when faced with a tricky job. One extraordinary entry in his official logbook in May 1942 reads, totally matter-of-factly, ‘Hurricane II C, solo, Abingdon to Tangmere (pissed as a coot).’ That same year he spoke out about his approach to a newspaper; ‘All together we’ve accounted for 234 Huns since the war began, and that’s more than any other squadron. You can’t imagine how keen the competition is between the squadrons’. In turn he had been shot down four times all in all, but figured that he had done a bit of damage to the enemy in retribution. Although he never thought about the man in the enemy plane. ‘They’re all just planes to me - just Messerschmidts or Dorniers, or something. It’s always a bit of a surprise when I see a man bale out, because I never think of him.’ While in Malta he had frequently visited an Italian pilot he shot down. ‘He was a really good chap, I liked him.’ 

In April 1943 MacLachlan was hit by tragedy, when brother Gordon went missing in action. His Spitfire was lost over Brest while escorting USAF bombers over the French coast. MacLachlan’s desire to win now took on a new intensity. In retribution Mac camouflaged his Mustang and worked tirelessly planning a ‘Ranger’ operation wherein he would penetrate the fighter defence belt and get into areas Allied fighters had not been seen at low altitude. Joining forces with Flt Lt Geoffrey Page, who was shot down in flames during the Battle of Britain, and who had suffered severe burns, they determined on a mission of vengeance. Page had his own scores to settle, one enemy aircraft for every skin graft he had endured. It was a success. MacLachlan took 3 1/2 enemy aircraft, Page 2 1/2. In a letter home he wrote; ‘Baked [Gordon] is more or less avenged - though he was worth more than the ten German’s I killed yesterday.’

With Flt Lt Page (left) at BBC studios, beaming with success following the 'Ranger' operation 

It was inevitable that they would try once again. On July 15th Mac and Page flew down to Tangmere, their base of operations, from where they set off for France with a Typhoon escort. Crossing over the French coast near Dieppe, MacLachlan’s kite began emit black smoke, and he climbed steeply from their treetop height, up to 1000 feet where his canopy opened. Apparently changing his mind about bailing, he brought the aircraft back down in a glide towards a small field, but his approach was too fast and he overshot entering a wooded area; both wings and tail being torn off as he did so. Page orbited several times at low height, but Maclachlan did not emerge from the wreckage. ‘Heartbroken’, Page returned home. 

As it happens, James did survive the landing, reputedly suffering critical head injuries, and was taken as a prisoner of war to Pont-l’Évêque hospital where he is said to have died a few days later. He was 24 years old. 

Perhaps the most poignant piece of paper amongst this collection, is an official typed list of his personal effects. ‘1 bible, 3 diaries, 1 scrapbook (Title ‘Fantasies of the Press’), 1 service dress greatcoat (worn and dirty), 1 tie, 1 rugby shirt, 2 blue pullovers...’ etc etc. His existence reduced to the contents of his room, a box. That is why it is so important to open up these unassuming cardboard caskets, and to breathe anew such a vibrant and extraordinary life. ‘You can see the delight of flying in his face’. Reported one newspaper shortly before his death. ‘It is one of the faces of those who fight wars they do not make, and for whom flying, and life, are one.’ Who could fail to be smitten by such a brave young boy. 

MacLachlan’s collection of ephemera and log books sold on Saturday 6th September for £6,800.

He still rests in France, buried in the village where he fell, and where his epitaph simply reads: ‘In proud and loving memory of our dear Jay. Death is swallowed up in Victory’.

Georgina 

Last winter sun. In the USA some six months before his final mission