Page 10 - RCAF Centenary

Flight Lt. Charles William ‘Charley’ Fox, DFC + Bar (1920-2008)
By Ted Barris
Charley Fox’s teenage plans had never included flying. He never built airplane models. He even refused a free flight over Hamilton once for fear he’d be airsick. But on a summer day in 1934, when he was 14, he watched a touring flight of RAF Hawker Fury fighter aircraft swoop low and fast over his home in Guelph. “They were silver-coloured fighter biplanes,” Fox said. “Five of them came zooming over the top of College Hill, glinting in the sunlight. Then swoosh. They were gone. But I never forgot it.”
Like so many smitten by the romance of mid-Depression aviation,
when war broke out in 1939, Fox left his retail job in Guelph and
enlisted in the RCAF. He’d set his sights on flying only the fastest
fighter aircraft of the day – the Spitfire. Because he graduated
second in his class of July 1941, however, Fox was told he would train military pilots in the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan here at home; it was Canada’s largest wartime investment, teaching men from across the Empire to
become military pilots, navigators, flight engineers, wireless radio operators, bomb-aimers and gunners. From October 1941 to May 1943, at No. 6 Service Flying Training School, in Dunnville, Ont., instructor Fox trained hundreds of pilots.
As a result of his two years of instructing, Fox had accumulated 1,500 flying hours (most front-line fighter pilots might have 200 hours). When finally posted overseas in 1944, however, he still flew tail-end-Charlie (last man in a group
of four Spitfires) when he joined Fighter Command serving at several of the legendary aerodromes in south England, including RAF Tangmere. On his first combat sortie over the English Channel with Canadian fighter ace Buzz Beurling leading, Fox remembered, he over-compensated during a formation take-off and accidentally allowed his propeller tips to scrape the tarmac. Later that night, Charley said Beurling disciplined him over a game of billiards.
“Shoot, Charley, that was a stupid thing to do,” Beurling said. “The prudent thing would have been to turn back.”
“That would make me look yellow,” Fox protested. Just then, Tangmere station came under bombing attack. The two Spitfire pilots dove under the pool table for cover. Fox turned to his squadron leader for a final word. “Consider yourself
told off,” Beurling said finally. Initiation complete. Charley Fox’s combat pilot log read like an official war diary of the squadron. Not just dogfights over southern England.
F/L Fox flew cover over Juno Beach on D-Day, strafing
runs at the Falaise gap and escort for Operation
Market-Garden – a full 222 operational sorties. Throughout the summer of 1944, Charley recalled that he and his squadron mates dive-bombed German
V-1 and V-2 launch sites, German locomotives, tanks, artillery and truck convoys, all considered “targets
of opportunity.” But Fox’s greatest “opportunity” appeared on the afternoon of July 17, 1944. He and his wing-mate Steve Randall spotted a German staff car racing along an avenue of trees. While Randall