"Personal Effects" - An RCAF Spitfire Pilot's Pre-Victory

ordnanceguy

ordnanceguy

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Gentlemen:

It is only an infrequent occurrence when we, as collectors, can associate a Smith & Wesson, and particularly a martial S&W, with a soldier, sailor, airman or Marine who might have carried it in the global struggle that was World War II. While occasionally we can celebrate a fellow collector's gem which can be attributed to a particular veteran, often a family member, the reality is that the passage of more than seven decades since the end of the War means that 99.9% of the guns we see today can have no such attribution.

For those of us who are students of history that is regrettable, as being able to put a veteran's name and face and background and personal experience alongside the steel and wood weapon gives us additional meaning and context. It reminds us again that it was vibrant young men, who had lives and families and aspirations, who were entrusted with these weapons and sent out to give rough justice to those who had threatened their way of life.

Today I ran across something which brought all of this to mind and which I thought would be worth sharing with all of you. No, I don't have the weapon and it does not appear in the Victory Model Database. Indeed, I have no idea where it is or if it still exists. Perhaps a collector or a shooter somewhere is enjoying it as just another example of an old S&W.

It was, or perhaps still is, S&W British Service Revolver (or "Pre-Victory" in today's collector-speak) serialed 893825. That would have been a 5 inch gun in .38 S&W, a Lend Lease piece that likely shipped from the factory in January, 1942. It would have shipped to the Hartford Ordnance Depot in Springfield, Mass., the shipping destination for the great bulk of the pre-Victory and Victory Lend Lease guns. From there it would have gone to the UK or perhaps to a Commonwealth country such as Australia or Canada.

And here is the connection. We now know that this revolver serialed 893825 was issued to Royal Canadian Air Force Pilot Officer David Rouleau of Ottawa, Canada. Tragically, at age 24 P/O Rouleau was killed in action in June 1942. A list of his personal effects was created, as seen below, and most of them were returned to his mother in 1945. Among those items listed was S&W revolver 893825, as shown in the bottom right corner of the document. As reflected in the List the revolver was "retained in safe custody", no doubt because it was considered government property and not something personal to be returned to Rouleau's family.

Personal08.jpg


All of this and more is revealed in two related and very interesting stories written by aviation author Dave O'Malley and published on the fascinating website of the Vintage Wings of Canada organization. The articles, entitled "Personal Effects" and "All the Things Never Done", focus not on the revolver but on the short life and wartime career of P/O Rouleau. They can be found at

All the Things Never Done – the last day of David Rouleau’s Life > Vintage Wings of Canada
and

Personal Effects > Vintage Wings of Canada

If you have read this thread this far then I commend both articles to you. You will learn that P/O Rouleau, an experienced Spitfire pilot, volunteered to help fly badly needed new fighter aircraft to the besieged island of Malta in the Mediterranean Sea. On June 3, 1942 P/O Rouleau and eight other pilots were ferrying 9 unarmed Spitfires having flown them off of the Royal Navy's aircraft carrier, HMS Eagle. The ferry flight was jumped by 12 Luftwaffe Bf-109 Messerschmidts. Four of the nine Spits were shot down into the sea, including Rouleau's. All four pilots were lost.

Rouleau's personal gear, including his S&W, remained at Gibraltar. As Mr. O'Malley's story so movingly relates over three years later the personal effects were delivered to Rouleau's mother in Canada. The mention of the S&W was almost a footnote in the List of Personal Effects but it leapt off the page to me. While the revolver is not available to us now it's connection to Pilot Officer Rouleau gives us, as Smith & Wesson collectors, that context which allows us to reflect on the sacrifice of one young Allied airman.

The photo below, taken from one of Mr. O'Malley's fine articles, shows P/O Rouleau, second from the left, when he was serving with 131 Squadron of the RAF in England.

RouleauX.jpg


A happier time as a boyish David Rouleau receives his pilot wings on completion of training in Canada.

Rouleau4.jpg


I salute the memory of P/O David Rouleau, as well as author Dave O'Malley for bringing the story of airman Rouleau to our attention.
 
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Great post, Charlie ! The Brits were always, and still are, very detailed oriented when it came to keeping records, etc. as evident here. In my US Army infantry unit, we always told each other " If I get it today, you guys can divy up my gear ! " Ed.
 
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Thanks much for a great post - one that really dramatizes the collection game. Finding a gun with such a pedigree would be a dream come true to me.

Jerry
 
Hmmm...no pocket knife. But it would have gone into the sea, with the owner. Odd that he wasn't wearing the .38.

I enjoyed the story of the six-inch .38-200 carried by a South African pilot seconded to the RAF in North Africa, then in Burma. The collector who bought the gun showed it here, with photos of the pilot and his aircraft and friends. A Major Harry Something. Hoffa? (The rank is correct; the SAAF didn't use RAF type ranks.)

And member Peter in South Africa showed us the five-inch .38-200 carried by a Warrant Officer Bucke (sp?) in armored cars. Looked as if he'd taken excellent care of it since it left govt. inventory with him. He had it until his death, when his daughter sold it to Peter.

Harry shot a rat with his .38. No idea if the armored car guy fired his at all. I'm sure that both men drew comfort from having these guns, and they cared enough about them to lift them from the military after the war. Maybe they did this legally, maybe not. But I'm glad we got to see the guns and know who carried them.

BTW, I think those Spitfires flying off of Malta had bulky air filters that hindered their performance. Flying them to Malta without ammo was a disgrace and in this case, cost four pilots their lives. Maybe not having the weight of the ammo in the wings gave them needed additional range to reach Malta. MK IX and later, inc. MK VIII, had filters built into the engines, and didn't need the bulky filters used on earlier Marks in tropical, dusty areas.

If the incident makes the ME-109 pilots look bad, remember they probably had no idea that the Spits were unarmed. In another case, P-40's from the RAF or another Allied AF caught JU-52 transports en route to North Africa. They shot them all down. It is sobering to think of what those Germans endured as they were shot up, knowing their planes were going to go down in the sea. But it was necessary, and had the circumstances been reversed, the Germans would have shot down Allied transport planes.

Does anyone recall the last name of Maj. Harry? I thought at first that he might be an Afrikaaner, but learned that name is really Irish, not Dutch. He was seen here with both a Hurricane and a Spitfire, I think a MK VIII, a sort used mainly over Italy and Burma. Harry seemed a dashing, bold sort, with a keen sense of humor. He was wearing the .38 in the photos. A fellow pilot also wore a revolver as he stood by Harry. Maybe or maybe not the same sort.

About 1941, all of the Colt M-1911 .455 autos were called into RAF Coastal Command and issued to flying boat crews. Other RAF and Allied air forces continued to use .38 revolvers, and most were probably S&W .38-200's.
 
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I think I may have walked some of the same ground, back in the 60's. I spent 2 years in England, stationed at RAF Sculthorpe, and visited RAF Alcombury, and Mindenhall. (Not sure of the spellings after all these years). Roamed the flight lines fixing jet engines in my early days.
 
Great posting. I'm a history buff and collector of vintage handguns. Love threads like this. One of the things that the various forums have over the gun mags. They would never give space in an issue for an article like this.
 
That whole bit about unarmed acft, during wartime, makes you wonder. I can't imagine how that felt.
Great post.
 
Thanks for posting.Certainly a sad note for a mother to receive.
Sad indeed,that he didn't have a chance at self defense.
Having visited Malta,as well as a former RAF base at Duxford,England,having recently watched for a second time,"The Malta Story", a mid 1950s movie about the plight of Malta during the war,I am glad to learn another piece of the story.
 
The Curtiss P -40's, called Kittyhawk by the British, didn't have the air filter problem of the Hurricane and early Spitfires. This would help to compensate for its engine (except in Merlin-engined P-40F) not letting the plane fight at much above 15,000 feet. The Allison engine wasn't capable at high altitudes.

The relatively few P-40's with the Merlin engine could presumably fight at high altitudes, and were used by USAAF pilots in the North African invasion, but I've found little info on them. I don't think British and Allied pilots other than US got P-40F's. The Merlin engines were just too needed for more modern aircraft.

It's not surprising that Spitfires could launch from carriers to reach Malta. There was a Navy version called the Seafire, which routinely operated from RN carriers. Eric Brown thought it was the deadliest of all carrier aircraft, but it lacked the long range needed in a naval fighter and the landing gear was too fragile for routine shipboard landings. The replacement Sea Fury was a longer ranged plane better suited to sea service. At least one Sea Fury downed a MiG-15 in the Korean conflict.
 
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Texas Star said:
The Curtiss P -40's, called Kittyhawk by the British, didn't have the air filter problem of the Hurricane and early Spitfires. This would help to compensate for its engine (except in Merlin-engined P-40F) not letting the plane fight at much above 15,000 feet. The Allison engine wasn't capable at high altitudes.

The relatively few P-40's with the Merlin engine could presumably fight at high altitudes, and were used by USAAF pilots in the North African invasion, but I've found little info on them. I don't think British and Allied pilots other than US got P-40F's. The Merlin engines were just too needed for more modern aircraft.
Click to expand...

The early P-40s - the B and C models - were called "Tomahawks" by the British, while the later models (D onwards) were called "Kittyhawks".

The Merlin powered P-40F was the Kittyhawk II in British service. The P-40L was a lightened version with only four .50s and smoother weight savings and was also Merlin powered and it was the Kittyhawk IIA in British service.

The Allison powered P-40K and P-40M were Allison powered versions of the P-40F and L and were known as the Kittyhawk III, while the final P-40N variant was known as the Kittyhawk IV.

----

All in all the P-40 is one of the most maligned aircraft in WWII. Their low supercharger ratios meant the Allison and Merlin powered developed maximum power at about 15,000 ft and thus were not well suited to the high altitude fighter roles in Northern Europe. However in North Africa they were very well suited to wait combat in 1942 as most of the air combat occurred at 18,000 feet or below.

The P-40s of the era were superior to the Hurricane and replaced them in the fighter role in Desert Air Force service. The generally low altitudes of combat in the theater negated most of the performance advantages of the Bf-109 Es and Fs and the P-40 was regarded as being superior to the 109E at low to medium altitude and equal to the 109F.

The P-40s were more maneuverable than the 109s and had an advantage in dive speed and in structural durability and survivability. They were also equally armed compared to the 109 E and had superior armament compared to the 109 F.

It wasn't until the arrival of the Bf-109G that the P-40 started to suffer from a performance gap, and by then they were primarily being used in the fighter bomber role. They were superb in that role as they could absorb a great deal of combat damage and they were excellent gun platforms. The marks from the E onward (with the exception of the lightweight L) had six .50s and the capability of carrying a pair of 500 pound bombs.

In the China Bruma India theater, the USAF used them in the same roles with equal success, and in fact when they converted P-40 squadrons to the P-51B and C, many pilots were non happy to have to give up their P-40s. As mentioned above the P-40 was a superb gun platform, much better than the Merlin powered Mustangs, and compared to the B and C Mustangs, they has six .50s compared only four, and those four were mounted at an angle and had a bad habit of jamming if they were fired while the aircraft was pulling significant Gs.

The P-51 was also very vulnerable to ground fire as the coolant and oil lines ran along the belly of the aircraft from the engine to fuselage mounted radiator near the trailing edge of the wing. In contrast the P-40 had all the plumbing up front in the nose - an area less that was much likely to be hit by ground fire.

---

People make the assumption that all Merlin engines were the same and were all superior to the Allison engines. The Allison engines actually had a higher power to weigh ratio, and the decision to equip them with lower ratio single stage superchargers was a bad call by the USAAF prior to the start of WWII as they did not envision the high altitudes that would be common in northern Europe.

It's important to remember that there is no free lunch though, and that optimizing the supercharging of the engine for high altitude also limited the power available at low altitude. One little known fact is that at altitudes under 10,000 ft, the P-40E, K, M, N, etc were actually faster than a P-51D, and the P-40 turned better and rolled faster than the P-51.

It was the Allison powered P-51, P-51A and A-36 aircraft that were fastest on the deck, getting the best of both worlds - a low altitude optimized engine and the P-51's clean airframe.

The Merlin powered P-40s also still only had a single stage, two speed supercharger, rathe than the two stage, two speed superchargers used on the high altitude Merlins. Despite all the claims that that performance at altitude was much better, the difference in performance was minor. For example, the Allison V-17-10-39, 1,150 hp P-40E had a top speed of 366 mph at about 15,000 ft compared to a top speed of 370 mph at 18,500 ft for the Merlin 28 / Packard Merlin V-1650-1 1,300 hp powered P-40L. The E had a service ceiling of 29,000 ft while the L had a ceiling of 36,000 ft, which also gave it slightly higher rate of climb on average.

It wasn't so much that there was a shortage of Merlin engines for P-40s (although that was part of it), it was more a case that the Merlin really didn't offer any advantage to the P-40 given the low altitude fighter bomber role it was performing.

----

Later in the war at least one of the USAAF fighter groups in the Mediterranean theater used to take the best P-51 pilot in a newly arriving shipment of replacement pilots and put him in a P-51 against one of the veteran pilots in a war early P-40 and have them dogfight 1 on 1 over the airfield while the other replacement pilots watched. The P-40 always beat the P-51, in large part due to the difference in pilot skills, but also due to the performance advantage the P-40 had over a P-51 at low altitude. This was done as an object lesson that while the new pilot might think he has the best fighter in the sky (and arguably did) he had to use it properly and ensure that he played to it's strengths and didn't get sucked into combat under conditions that were favorable to the enemy aircraft.

---

Sadly, the P-40 is most remembered for it's poor performance agains the A6M2 zero early in the war, but ironically Japanese pilots remembered it differently.

Most of the Japanese aces of the era regarded the P-40E as being equal to the A6M2 and A6M3 zeros they were flying at the time. The P-40E was faster at low altitude in level flight than the Zero, it dove much faster than the Zero, it was better armed and better armoured than the Zero, and it could roll much better than the zero at any speed over 200 kts.

The Zero had superb lateral and vertical maneuverability and it had and excellent rate of climb, however it had very heavy aileron forces at higher speeds and the stock got very stiff, making it a slow and tiring process to roll in and out of turns, something which negated the Zero's turn performance in a short turning fight.

For example, if a zero bounced a P-40 at much over 200 kts indicated airspeed, the P-40 could immediately break into a turn that the Zero would be slower to roll into to follow, and if the P-40 limited the turn to about 90 degrees before diving away or reversing the turn, the Zero would have a hard time following. The smart move then for a P-40 pilot was to break hard through about 90 degrees and dive to extend away from the Zero. The Zero didn't really have an advantage in a fight unless the P-40 pilot tried to engage in an extended turning fight or tried to pull up into the vertical.

Once allied pilots in the P-40, the P-39 and the F4F figured that out, they were able to fight the Zero on equal terms. That is in essence what dissimilar air combat training is all about - using your aircraft's strengths to best advantage to exploit weaknesses in the opposing aircraft and using any performance advantages to dictate when the fight begins or ends.
 
Good morning Forum;
This is a terrific post.......reminds me so much of what I do and why I do it (collecting, history, sport...and pretty much in that order). So....like maybe some of you, went into the Service, came home, raised family, 40 years later found a little "disposable income" and started looking first for the guns of my youth (Stevens double 12 rabbit, Savage butter knife 22 Hornet for woodchucks (whistle-pigs to you guys west of the big Muddy), pops 1911A1 for fun, Outdoorsman 22 also for fun). Once those guys were on hand went looking for Military hardware knowing even then there was no chance of a genuine M14, but the 1903A3 and a M1 Garand were certainly "in-sight" if not in hand. Then one day along comes computers, forums, and I see where real true collectors not only enjoy the same type guns, but really know their "Stuff" and the bug bites and now some 20 nice pieces later the addiction is "hard set" as we say in construction trades. Even found a M1A (close but still no cigar).

Checking out all the above history, knowing great guns are still out there, wanting to find the providence that goes with them if available I wonder about S & W or gun collectors say 40 or 50 years from now. We know they will have the same stories, questions, search for answers and details but alas............how many of us will be able to find the time to jot down our own details, so that many years from now some collector will relate that "so-and-so" carried this piece in Nam, or Desert Storm, or ?? and here is a Polaroid photo got from his (or her) estate when I acquired this original issue M-1911A1, this Beretta M9, this Winchester M14, etc.

Who knows 50 years from now if everything might be legal or not, but we will be gone so for me........I am going up in the attic sometime soon, get that box of 1966/67/68 Army stuff, including those old yellowed Polaroids sent home to the wife in those days, see if some old Army papers, or personal letters listed any kind of serial number (some I memorized at certain Sgt. "request") and see if I cannot concoct a little memo and pics "for the record" .

Seriously......if I can get this done, even on one piece in my collection, even if Pop's old Ithaca......I'll post here and we will see where it goes.

So..........how about it? Drag out those old photos, you former LEO's you may even know and remember your duty weapon and its serial number, when you carried it, did it see action, etc.

Enough rambling for this morning and again.......great Original Post, great story and backed up. My hats off to all who ever carried a weapon at their job and had their life on the line, whether LEO, Military, Security,
 
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