Everything about Clive Caldwell totally explained
Group Captain Clive Robertson Caldwell,
DSO,
DFC and
Bar (
28 July 1910–
5 August 1994) was the leading
Australian
air ace of
World War II. He is officially credited with shooting down 28.5 enemy aircraft, in over 300 operational sorties. In addition to his official score, he's been ascribed three shared victories, six probables and 15 damaged. Caldwell flew
Curtiss P-40 Tomahawks and Kittyhawks in the
North African Campaign and
Supermarine Spitfires in the
South West Pacific Theatre. He was the highest-scoring P-40 pilot from any air force and the highest-scoring Allied pilot in North Africa.
Early life
Caldwell was born in
Lewisham, Sydney and educated at
Albion Park School,
Sydney Grammar School and
Trinity Grammar School. He learned to fly in 1938 with the Aero Club of New South Wales. When
World War II broke out, he joined the
Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF), with the intention of becoming a
fighter pilot. As he was over the age limit for fighter training, Caldwell persuaded a pharmacist friend to alter the details on his birth certificate. He was accepted by the RAAF and joined the
Empire Air Training Scheme (EATS; also known as the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan and similar names).
Second World War
Middle East and North Africa
Caldwell's first, brief combat posting was a British
Hurricane unit,
No. 73 Squadron,
Royal Air Force, in the early stages of the
North African campaign. He had gained only a few operational hours when he was transferred to
No. 250 Squadron RAF as it converted to the new
P-40 Tomahawk, one of the first units in the world to operate P-40s. According to some accounts, Caldwell — as
F/O Jack Hamlyn's wingman — was involved in the P-40's first ever kill, of an Italian
CANT Z.1007 bomber, over
Egypt on
6 June 1941. However, the claim wasn't officially recognised. (Hamlyn and Sgt Tom Paxton scored the first official kill two days later, another CANT.) Soon afterwards, Caldwell served with the squadron over
Syria and Lebanon.
After he struggled to acquire the skill of
gunnery deflection, Caldwell developed a training technique, known as "shadow shooting," in which he fired at the shadow of his own aircraft on the desert surface. He downed a German
Messerschmitt Bf 109E, piloted by Leutnant Heinz Schmidt of
Jagdgeschwader 27, over
Capuzzo.
On
4 July 1941, Caldwell saw a German pilot shoot and kill a close friend,
P/O Donald Munro, who was descending to the ground in a parachute. This was a controversial practice, but was nevertheless common among some German and Allied pilots. One biographer, Kristin Alexander, suggests that it may have caused Caldwell's attitude to harden significantly. Months later,
press officers and journalists popularised Caldwell's nickname of "Killer", which he disliked. One reason for the nickname was that he too shot enemy airmen after they parachuted out of aircraft.) A more commonly-cited reason for the nickname was his habit of using up ammunition left over at the end of sorties, to shoot up enemy troops and vehicles. During his war service, Caldwell wrote in a notebook: "it's your life or theirs. This is war." On
23 November, Caldwell shot down an
Experte,
Hauptmann Wolfgang Lippert, commander of
Staffel II./JG 27, who bailed out uninjured. For this action he was awarded the
Distinguished Flying Cross. Caldwell claimed five
Junkers Ju 87 (
Stuka)
dive bombers in a matter of minutes on
5 December. For this he was awarded a
Bar to his DFC.
In January 1942, Caldwell was promoted to
Squadron Leader and was given command of
No. 112 Squadron RAF, becoming the first EATS graduate to command a British squadron. 112 Sqn at that time included a number of
Polish aviators, and this was why Caldwell was later awarded the Polish
Krzyż Walecznych (KW; "Cross of Valour").
Caldwell scored another striking victory in February 1942, while leading a formation of 11 Kittyhawks from 112 Sqn and 3 Sqn. Over
Gazala, he sighted a
schwarm of Bf 109Fs flying some 2,000 ft higher. Caldwell immediately nosed into a shallow dive, applied maximum power and
boost, then pulled his Kittyhawk up into a vertical climb. With his P-40 "hanging from its propeller," he fired a burst at a 109 flown by
Leutnant Hans-Arnold Stahlschmidt of
I./JG27, who was lagging behind the others. Stahlschmidt's fighter "shuddered like a carpet being whacked with a beater" before spinning out of control. Although the Kittyhawk pilots thought that the 109 had crashed inside Allied lines, Stahlschmidt was able to crash-land in friendly territory.
When Caldwell left the theatre later that year, the commander of air operations in North Africa and the Middle East,
Air Vice Marshal Arthur Tedder described him as: "[a]n excellent leader and a first class shot". The Spitfire pilots found Japanese fighter pilots reluctant to engage Allied fighters over Australia, due to the distance from their bases in the
Dutch East Indies. The wing initially suffered high losses, due to the inexperience of many of its pilots, and teething mechanical problems with their newly-"
tropicalised" Mark VC Spitfires. This was viewed with concern by high commanders, to such extent that the Allied air commander in the South West Pacific, Major General
George Kenney, considered sending the wing to the
New Guinea campaign, and returning U.S.
Fifth Air Force fighter units to Darwin.
Caldwell scored what was to be his last aerial victory, a
Mitsubishi Ki-46 "Dinah", over the
Arafura Sea on
17 August 1943. By 1944, with the Japanese forces retreating north, Caldwell was again posted to Darwin, this time commanding
No. 80 (Fighter) Wing, equipped with the Spitfire Mark VIII.
In April 1945, while serving at
Morotai in the Dutch East Indies with the
Australian First Tactical Air Force, as
Officer Commanding No. 80 Wing, Caldwell played a leading part in the "
Morotai Mutiny", in which several senior flyers resigned in protest at what they saw as the relegation of RAAF fighter squadrons to dangerous and strategically worthless ground attack missions. An investigation resulted in three senior officers being relieved of their commands, with Caldwell and the other "mutineers" cleared.
Prior to the "mutiny", Caldwell had been charged over his involvement in an alcohol racket on Morotai, where liquor was flown in by RAAF aircraft and then sold to the sizable U.S. forces contingent in the locality. He was court martialled in January 1946 and reduced to the rank of
Flight Lieutenant. Caldwell left the service in February.
Later years
After the war, Caldwell was involved as a purchasing agent obtaining surplus aircraft and other military equipment from the U.S.
Foreign Liquidation Commission in the
Philippines. The aircraft and equipment were exported to Australia in 1946. After the successful conclusion of this venture, Caldwell joined a cloth import/export company in Sydney and shortly after became its managing director. He became a partner in 1953 and later served as chairman of the board. The firm, Clive Caldwell (Sales) Pty Ltd, achieved considerable success under Caldwell's direction and expanded through subsidiaries worldwide.
Although in later life Caldwell rarely spoke of his wartime service, upon his death in Sydney on
5 August 1994, Australians "mourned the passing of a true national hero".
Honours and awards
Further Information
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