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Served with 79 Sqn.
Richard Douglas 'Doug' Vanderfield, DFC
Richard Douglas Vanderfield, or Doug as he was generally known, was born on 25.11.14
into a Sydney family of timber merchants and was a student at Newington. In his youth
he was a good short middle distance runner, played Rugby for Western Suburbs as a
winger, and enjoyed car racing.
He enlisted in the RAAF on 29.4.40 and was part of the first intake of the Empire Flying
Training Scheme in Australia. He progressed to the first course of 2 SFTS at Wagga, and
sailed to England in November 1940 on the SS Largs Bay.
He completing training at 56 Operational Training Unit at Sutton Bridge. He then flew
Hurricanes with 258 Squadron RAF from Isle of Man, Kenley and Redhill on Channel
sweeps and “circuses” into occupied France. Air defence was a constant requirement with
the German “Blitz” on London at its height. A highlight of the time in England was being
invited to Buckingham Palace to meet Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret.
With war clouds gathering in the Far East, he was then posted out to Singapore. On the
way, he was used on the Takoradi Ferry, where fighters were flown in small groups
across the Sahara Desert from Nigeria to Egypt and good navigation was a ‘must’ to pick
up the fuelling points on the way. From Cairo a flying boat took him to Singapore via 15
hops of 2 hours or so!
Doug joined 453 Squadron in Singapore in October 1941as a flight commander, flying
the obsolescent Brewster Buffalo. In the short but sharp conflict, he managed to shoot
down 5½ Japanese aircraft, making him one of the highest scoring Australian pilots in the
theatre and one of the first Commonwealth aces against the Japanese. He witnessed the
sinking of the capital ships HMS “Prince of Wales” and “Repulse” by Japanese aircraft,
where the squadron was on standby to provide air cover but were not called upon until it
was too late to help.
In the later stages, the squadron had to operate from Sembawang
airfield while it was being constantly shelled from Johore. On one of the last ships out of
Singapore, the squadron had some luck in making it to Ceylon via Sumatra from where it
was shipped back to Australia.
He became a founding member of 76 Squadron as a flight commander under the
legendary Bluey Truscott, initially training, then flying offshore patrols, on Kittyhawks in
Townsville for six months.
Prior to the squadron going to New Guinea he was sent down
to 2 OTU at Mildura as a flying instructor and started an association with Spitfires. With
Clive Caldwell, he was involved in test flying the new Boomerang fighter and assessing
it against the Spitfire and Kittyhawk.
Doug joined 79 Squadron, flying the Spitfire Vc, just prior to its dispatch up north in May
1943 as a flight commander. Initially based at Goodenough Is, then Kiriwina Is in the
Trobriands off East New Guinea, operations included air defence, sweeps to New Britain
and escorting Beauforts to attacks on Bougainville. He was acting CO of the squadron for
about 3 months in early 1944. At the conclusion of this, his third tour of active
operational flying, he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross with the citation
stating that “…he has displayed outstanding devotion to duty and his courage and
keenness have been an inspiration to all other pilots in the squadron.”
Sent back to Australia, he attended a controllers course in Adelaide and then spent 6
months as sector controller in Darwin with 1 Group. He then sailed on the SS Mexico to
Morotai as CO of 110 MFCU with a promotion to Squadron Leader. He was involved in
the “Morotai Incident”, where 8 senior officers simultaneously resigned their
commissions in protest against the way the war was being waged in the area at the time.
They felt that lives were being wasted on unnecessary attacks on isolated, but heavily
defended, Japanese targets far from the front line. They were subsequently backed by
General Macarthur’s air force chief, General George C Kenney, and a Royal Commission
was later held into the incident. After giving evidence to the commission in Melbourne he
returned to Morotai to help organise the RAAF component of the Oboe landings at
Tarakan and Balikpapan. Going ashore at Balikpapan, he made a rare comment in his
diary that the place was ‘completely rooted’ by the intensive bombardment.
After the War he settled down to become a timber merchant and raise a family. He died
in 1973 from a heart attack playing competition squash.