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When Bruce Edward Pinch was born on 22 August 1918, in Ravenna, The Blue Mountains, Grey, Ontario, Canada, his father, Edward Richard Pinch, was 30 and his mother, Viola Edna McKnight, was 27. He lived in Thornbury, Grey, Ontario, Canada in 1931. He died on 8 May 1993, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, at the age of 74.
It’s truly hard to believe that these young pilots with so few flying hours under their belts would take on a journey of such epic proportions, flying to one exotic outpost to another in a powerful and sometimes temperamental fighter aircraft. Bruce Pinch was the first to go. On February 18, 1943, he signed for Spitfire AB319, a PR IV and took it on a 2.5 hour cross-country flight to test its fuel consumption, something he really need to know in order to feel confident he when flying long distance over water, especially on the Gibraltar leg of his journey. He returned to Benson and got ready to leave, handing over his personal effects to be flown to India by transport aircraft. Six days later on the 24th, he left RAF Benson for RAF Portreath on the north coast of Cornwall, about as close to Gibraltar as he could get and still be in Great Britain. The next day, he took off and headed south over the English Channel and Bay of Biscay, found Cape Finisterre, then, respecting their neutrality, skirted west of northern Spain and Portugal, made a left turn at Cape Vincent and landed at RAF North Front on Gibraltar 4.25 hours after taking off.. That night he had a dinner of steak and eggs and noted it in his logbook. Next morning he took off from Gibraltar and headed due east for RAF Maison Blanche in Algiers, a flight of 2.75 hours. He must have gone into Algiers for the night as his logbook entry reads “Pretty Girls”.
The next day he fired up AB319 and headed southeast for 4.75 hours to RAF Marble Arch in Rad Lanuf, Libya. He was not as impressed with Ras Lanuf as he was with Algiers for his log book tells us he though it was “A Hell of a Dump”. He was glad to get out of Libya the next day (Feb 28) for RAF Heliopolis in Cairo, four hours to the east. He made the most of his stay in Cairo, spending ten days there, enjoying the nightlife and the Pyramids. His log book sums it up well — “Good Beer”. On March 9th, he climbed back into a well-serviced AB319 and head out again for India and another long leg. His destination was RAF Shaibah near Basrah, Iraq, but he got lost and after 4.75 hours flying time, force-landed in the desert at a railway station he called Ur Junction, Iraq. He waited there three days for fuel and carried on to Shaibah. Unfortunately, his Spitfire experienced a glycol leak and 1.5 hours later he force landed again, spending the night in the desert next to his Spitfire. He was picked up the next morning and driven to Shaibah. A repair crew got to work on AB319 and when complete, another pilot flew it off to Shaibah, where, five days later, Pinch took it aloft for 1. 75 hour performance test.
On March 20, Peck and his Spitfire took off for the Arabian Gulf coastal city-state of Sharjah of the Trucial States (Now the United Arab Emirates), a dusty hot and very remote station inhabited by a squadron of Bristol Blenheims (244 Squadron) used on anti-submarine patrols in the Arabian Gulf and the Indian Ocean. He enjoyed the 3.5 hour flight over the red sands and turquoise waters of the Gulf with the narrows of the strategic Strait of Hormuz to his left. He spent the night in Mahatta Fort which had been built by the RAF before the war to protect the Imperial Airways Airstrip there.
The next day, Pinch and AB319 took off for Jiwani, Persia (Iran), just a short 1.75 hour flight due east. He stopped ling enough to have tea and cakes while his Spitfire was serviced and fuelled and took off again father east to Karachi, India (now Pakistan), a flight of 1.5 hours. In his log book for March 21, he makes a mysterious notation “Bad Luck. Clarky Killed”. Would love to know if this was a friend whose death news finally caught with him or if it was something that happened to someone who was travelling with him. It seems there were issues with his Spitfire, for, in Karachi four days later, he made another performance test of .75 hours. He then waited two more days before launching for Jodhpur, India in Rajistan. He didn’t get far, returning in 30 minutes due to an oil leak. The next morning (March 28) he completed the 2.25 hour flight to Jodhpur and that evening he visited the massive Umaid Bhawan Place, built for Maharaja Umaid Singh and just completed that same year.
The next morning he was off to Allahabad (now Prayagraj) along the Ganges River, where he remarked in his log book: “Hot as Hell”. It was no place for a Spitfire to run its engine for any etended period of time. The following day, March 30, 1943, he brought AB319 into RAF Dum Dum, Calcutta (now Kolkata) after a final 2.33 hour flight. His log book simply says… “They were glad to see us”. It is only at this point that I realized he was likely flying in the company of other Spitfires, at least on the last leg of the flight. The 681 Squadron ORB stated that two Spitfires AB 318 with a Sergeant Huges (Possibly Hughes) and AB39 with Bruce Pinch . There is no other indication.