Edwin Swales

Edwin “Ted” Swales was a South African, born near Durban in Natal in 1915, who served in the South African Air Force and was attached to RAF Bomber Command. By early 1945 he was a captain with No. 582 Squadron at Little Staughton in Huntingdonshire — the only South African to fly with the elite Pathfinder Force, which marked targets for the main bomber stream. He had already been awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.

On the night of 23/24 February 1945 he was Master Bomber for an attack by more than 350 Lancasters on Pforzheim. The Master Bomber’s task was to circle the target and direct the main force onto the aiming point. Soon after he arrived over the city Swales’ Lancaster was attacked by a night-fighter; one engine was knocked out and his rear guns disabled, and a second engine was later lost. Almost defenceless, he stayed over Pforzheim, calmly issuing his instructions until he was satisfied the attack had succeeded. Only then did he turn for home in his crippled aircraft. When it became clear the Lancaster could not be saved, he held it steady — refusing to abandon the controls — so that every member of his crew could bale out in turn. All of them survived; moments later the aircraft crashed and Swales was found dead at the controls.

He was buried at Leopoldsburg War Cemetery in Belgium and awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross, one of only a handful given to Pathfinder pilots, all of them posthumous. He remains one of South Africa’s most honoured airmen of the war.