Bio / Text:
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Known by his middle name 'Ingles', he Joined the KOSBs in Selkirk on 26-05-39, his 17th birthday and after completing Basic Training and being taught to drive was seconded to the Searchlights to drive a Thornycroft Generator lorry.
He served in Dundee (where he was narrowly missed by a 500lb bomb dropped on his searchlight team by a German Seaplane), Wick (where he witnessed the Lockheed Hudson carrying Air Vice Marshall Charles Dempster Breese which had suffered engine failure, being baulked by another aircraft as it came in to land, it stalled and crashed, killing all four on board in March 1941) and Edinburgh with the AA guns guarding the Forth Rail Bridge) he finally transferred to the RAF in 1942 when the qualification rules were relaxed.
Ingles was sent firstly to the E.F.C in Perth Scotland on Tiger Moths (March 1942).
Then he was sent to be trained in the USA - via Canada - Steerman PT17s on Turner Field: Georgia, Lakeland: Florida, Gunter Field: Alabama, Vultee BT13s at Eglin Field and at Craig Field, Harvard AT6s, from June '42 to Dec '42 . (Arnold Scheme)
Ingles returned to the UK crossing the Atlantic by boat for a second time and here he requested Spitfires and an Overseas posting as he was too late for the Battle of Britain.
He then flew Miles Masters and Avro Ansons at No 5 AFU at Ternhill then Spitfire I, II, IIb and V at OTU Rednal and Balado Bridge before being posted to Australia and 548 Squadron.
He travelled by boat again to New York, through the Nazi U-Boat blockade, then by train to San Francisco and boat via New Zealand to Australia where he joined the Squadron in Brisbane. They realised very soon that despite the huge Japanese bombing raid on Darwin it now seemed unlikely that the Japanese would invade Australia after all, but the pilots were all to discover that no-one would be allowed to transfer out, they were in Australia for Churchill to show how Britain was protecting the Colonies.
Ingles and his mate Don Shoreland were sent on a refresher course on Spitfires and Wirraways at Mildura as they had not flown for a couple of months and then they returned to the delivery of new Spitfire VIIIs at Strathpine airfield, Brisbane, initially under F/LT JAC Aiken. There was a collision between two Spitfires there that took the lives of both pilots incuding the new C.O. Sergeant Al Chandler in A58-392 collided with Squadron Leader Wright in A58-393. F/Lt Watts took over as C.O.
Orders were received that all aircraft were to be stripped of camouflage paint and the bare aluminium polished, a dirty, smelly, painfull job with thinners and rags that produced a stunningly beautiful aircraft.
548 Squadron then moved up to Livingstone airfield near Darwin.
During the move Ingles survived a forced landing in the bush in TS-O A58-319, 'his' aircraft, (the aircraft remarkably was intact and recovered by flying it out) en route to Livingstone when the squadron became lost in un-forecast heavy cloud near Townsville and many ran out of fuel, amazingly only one Spitfire was destroyed, P/O Davison's TS-E, when he landed in what he thought was a grassy field that turned out to be a sugar cane plantation.
Ingles then also survived crashing his friend Jimmy Hilton's Spitfire V111 (TS-G A58-394) on take-off at Livingstone on 30th July '44 while doing a post-service test flight, when the throttle linkage came loose. The end of the runway had only just been cleared of tree stumps after P/O Brown had pranged his Spitfire in similar circumstances on 29th June '44 and had sadly died from burns received when his aircraft hit the stumps and burst into flames.
After many close-shaves and lucky escapes, the war ended and Ingles travelled to Manilla via Port Moresby and Manus via aircraft and U.S gunboat to help with repatriation of the Allied POWs then he returned home by liner via Australia, Bombay and Gibralter to the UK before being demobbed on 11-02-46.
(The 548 Squadron 'Operations Record Book' is available to read free - and it is a very interesting and readable document compared to most active fighting squadron's books - on the Australian NAA web site at ( https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=1359512 )
