No. 48 Squadron

No. 48 Squadron entered the Second World War as a Coastal Command general reconnaissance unit, flying Avro Ansons on anti-submarine patrols from Thorney Island and later conducting anti-shipping operations off the Norwegian coast after re-equipping with Lockheed Hudsons in 1941. From December 1942 the squadron operated from Gibraltar, patrolling the western approaches to the Mediterranean throughout Operation Torch and the North African campaign. In February 1944 it returned to Britain, converted to the Douglas Dakota, and transferred to No. 46 Group, Transport Command, basing itself at RAF Down Ampney in Gloucestershire. On D-Day, 6 June 1944, the squadron despatched thirty aircraft on pre-dawn paratroop drops and a further twenty-two on glider-towing duties. During the Arnhem operation in September 1944 it flew resupply sorties into a surrounded bridgehead and suffered losses amounting to roughly one third of its strength. The squadron also participated in the Rhine crossing in the spring of 1945 before deploying to the Far East for the final months of the war, disbanding at Patenga on 16 January 1946. Its motto, Forte et fidele — “By strength and faithfulness” — reflected a lineage stretching back to the RFC, when it became the first British fighter squadron to take the Bristol Fighter into action on the Western Front in 1917.