Talk:No. 217 Squadron RAF

Sources for history of No. 217 Squadron RAF

The history of No. 217 Squadron used to be maintained in a section of the main RAF website; but this information has now unfortunately been deleted by the RAF, who say that they no longer wish to maintain such historical information. They refer the reader instead to the RAF Museum website, but this is woefully inadequate; they have not (yet) curated the material removed from the main RAF website. I was therefore forced to remove dead links to the RAF website.

For the origins and overall history of No. 217 Squadron, I refer instead to several independent historical websites collating military and aviation history. These include the work of Malcolm Barass, John Rickard and Ian Dennis and Martin Edwards, who with only slight variations repeat the information that used to be available on the RAF website. For details of the bases occupied wholly or partly by the squadron, a full listing is given by Ross McNeill. The list of aircraft used and commanding officers is given by Malcolm Barass.

The fullest authoritative history of No. 217 Squadron during the WWII period is the book An Expendable Squadron: The Story of 217 Squadron, Coastal Command, 1939-1945 by Roy Conyers Nesbit, cited in the bibliography. He served with this squadron approximately from 1942-45. The account he gives tallies closely with the recollections of my late father, Fg. Off. John Howard Simons, who served as a navigator on the Bristol Beaufighter TF.X, in No. 217 Squadron, during the 1944-45 posting to Ceylon. The preparations for Operation Jinx to attack capital ships in Singapore harbour come both from Nesbit and my father's logs, although no formal record of this planned attack was ever retained by the RAF. This story also appeared in an earlier article by Nesbit published in the Aircrew Association magazine. Nesbit authored several books about RAF Coastal Command, and he died in 2014 just as this last book was published. The one-way missions of No. 217 Squadron were also described by John Mackie in the book Well... You Wanted to Fly! edited by Jack Burgess, cited in the bibliography.

Further anecdotal memories of the actions of No. 217 Squadron come from websites which may in future be in danger of disappearing, through lack of maintenance. The Scottish Saltire branch of the Aircrew Association was wound up in 2017, due to the last few members being too frail to continue. This has an excellent online library that was migrated to a new server in 2017, and includes two relevant articles by John Mackie, respectively catalogued as Library Reference 019 and Library Reference 154 describing the squadron's time in the Far East. Other anecdotes describing earlier actions in the Mediterranean come from John Rickard, Ian Dennis and Martin Edwards and Glenn Denney, who confirms one account of a downed Beaufort crew from No. 217 Squadron overcoming their Italian rescuers.

Note that some of the details taken from the RAF's (now defunct) history page are slightly misleading. The base in the Indian Ocean was not "Cocos Island" (which is actually near Costa Rica), but the "Cocos (Keeling) Islands", nothing more than a couple of coral atolls. While an RAF base was secretly constructed there in mid-1945 towards the end of the war, this was only a staging-post with a temporary runway, supplied secretly with fuel and weaponry (torpedoes for the Beaus) by sea, so as not to alert the Japanese. It was only ever occupied by ground crews of No. 217 Squadron - the aircraft never followed. It was not used for the planned invasion of the Malayan mainland (this was to be undertaken by the detachment that moved to RAF Gannavaram, in conjunction with No. 22 Squadron), but rather was intended as the staging post for Operation Jinx, a cancelled mission to attack Japanese capital ships in Singapore harbour. Nesbit has the best account; and Mackie supports this.

AJHSimons (talk) 11:05, 26 April 2019 (UTC)