S/Ldr. Cedric W. Williams 'Back Among Friends'
A dramatic moment of reunion for S/Ldr. C. W. Williams after some extremely perilous moments... a moment of relief, but one that symbolises sad loss too...
It is the 18th August 1940, ‘The Hardest Day’ of the Battle of Britain. The Hurricanes of no. 17 Squadron, led by S/ Ldr. Cedric Watcyn Williams are scrambled to patrol in the vicinity of Margate -Canterbury, placed by the controllers there to be in the perfect position to intercept the Luftwaffe bombers and fighters making their hurried return to their bases in France after their attacks on Kenly and Biggin Hill.
Due to the hazy conditions making it hard for the Observer Corps to track the paths of the returning aircraft, 17 Squadron and the other squadrons thus placed were spread out in a thin line to try and ensure that at least some of them were able to make the intercept… a truly deadly ‘game’ of British Bulldogs.
In the haze, 17 Squadron progressively found themselves split up into sections by attacks from the passing groups of enemy Me109 fighters, leaving just Red Section with Commanding Officer (CO), Sq/L. C.W. Williams, Sgt. W. J. Etherington and newcomer P/O. N.D. Solomon searching to bear down on the enemy bombers and prevent them slipping away unmolested through the haze.
Etherington’s account, quoted in ‘The Hardest Day’, by Alfred Price, furthers the story and gives a sense of what the experience was like:
“Solomon suddenly disappeared. I never saw what happened to him, nor heard a peep from him. It was his first operational mission and we never saw him again… so I began weaving from side to side to cover the CO’s tail. There were just two of us, and what seemed like hundreds of enemy aircraft. I thought ‘How can we possibly get out of this?’ And then suddenly the CO wasn’t there either…”
In just moments, Etherington had lost sight of the CO, Williams in the haze, who had dived in to attack a group of three Dornier bombers he had sighted. Williams succeeded in setting the port engine on one Dornier alight, but as he saw it dive steeply away and he broke off the attack, Williams then found himself under attack from an Me109, moments later joined by 3 others, all in pursuit of him.
Diving in a series of hectic turns through the haze, Williams was able to throw off this deadly four against one assault on his aircraft, perhaps no doubt helped by the fact that the Me109s would have been running dangerously low on fuel at this point.
Heading back furiously for safety at sea level, Williams was able to rendezvous near Dover with Etherington and into the comparative safety of a further group of his Squadron’s aircraft prior to returning to base.
Tragically, Williams was killed just one week later, on the 25th August, engaged in a head to head attack against an Me110 when his port wing was broken from his aircraft and he crashed into the sea.
My painting depicts the moment of relief after his encounter with the 4 Me109s on the 18th August, where he finds himself ‘Back among Friends’, reunited with the Hurricane of Etherington and other members of his Squadron.
It was a moving moment to depict, encompassing as it does the sense of relief after the desperate life and death struggle of just a few moments before; all this with the added poignancy of knowing that despite surviving this encounter,
Williams would still lose his life in the bravest and most dramatic circumstances only a week later. Wrapped into the piece too for me, is the sad and tragic loss of Solomon just moments before, who, thrust straight into these vicious combats with such bare experience that he, alongside many like him during the Battle, lost his life in his first combat encounter.
All these elements are combined in the painting with the poignant placing of this aerial reunion’s location, over those iconic White Cliffs of Dover, which was also topped out at the time with that most relevant of technological advances to the Battle of Britain, the Chain Home Radar Station at Swingate.
The Chain Home radar station at Swingate, the receiver masts are in the first detail, with Sgt. Etherington's Hurricane. In the second the transmitter masts are visible, with the further aircraft of 17 Squadron.
The painting has another kind of locational relevance to me too. Williams was born in South Wales and educated at Ystradgynlais, in the upper part of the Swansea Valley, not twenty miles from where I write this- literally the other side of the mountain that forms the horizon of the view from my window now.
The view from my window with the mountains above Ystradgynlais in the distance.
It is touching to see that a few years ago the school he attended there had a ceremony to remember him, placing a plaque (provided by the Battle of Britain Historical Society) on its walls in his memory. The ceremony was also attended by his brother, Master Mariner G. D. Williams, who served with the Merchant Navy on the Atlantic Convoys during the war. In all, a moving reminder of how, even in these quiet hills, the effects of war directly impacted so many families so greatly too.
There seem to be so many threads to this painting, ostensibly about just one of many such encounters in the Battle of Britain, but leading off in so many directions of meaning too. Threads that pull at the heartstrings; not just about the brave sacrifices of ‘The Few’ but unravel into the so many wider stories that underline the tough fabric of national stoicism and endeavour that ‘held the line’ in the face of such tough odds at this turning point in history.
Due to the hazy conditions making it hard for the Observer Corps to track the paths of the returning aircraft, 17 Squadron and the other squadrons thus placed were spread out in a thin line to try and ensure that at least some of them were able to make the intercept… a truly deadly ‘game’ of British Bulldogs.
In the haze, 17 Squadron progressively found themselves split up into sections by attacks from the passing groups of enemy Me109 fighters, leaving just Red Section with Commanding Officer (CO), Sq/L. C.W. Williams, Sgt. W. J. Etherington and newcomer P/O. N.D. Solomon searching to bear down on the enemy bombers and prevent them slipping away unmolested through the haze.
Etherington’s account, quoted in ‘The Hardest Day’, by Alfred Price, furthers the story and gives a sense of what the experience was like:
“Solomon suddenly disappeared. I never saw what happened to him, nor heard a peep from him. It was his first operational mission and we never saw him again… so I began weaving from side to side to cover the CO’s tail. There were just two of us, and what seemed like hundreds of enemy aircraft. I thought ‘How can we possibly get out of this?’ And then suddenly the CO wasn’t there either…”
In just moments, Etherington had lost sight of the CO, Williams in the haze, who had dived in to attack a group of three Dornier bombers he had sighted. Williams succeeded in setting the port engine on one Dornier alight, but as he saw it dive steeply away and he broke off the attack, Williams then found himself under attack from an Me109, moments later joined by 3 others, all in pursuit of him.
Diving in a series of hectic turns through the haze, Williams was able to throw off this deadly four against one assault on his aircraft, perhaps no doubt helped by the fact that the Me109s would have been running dangerously low on fuel at this point.
Heading back furiously for safety at sea level, Williams was able to rendezvous near Dover with Etherington and into the comparative safety of a further group of his Squadron’s aircraft prior to returning to base.
Tragically, Williams was killed just one week later, on the 25th August, engaged in a head to head attack against an Me110 when his port wing was broken from his aircraft and he crashed into the sea.
My painting depicts the moment of relief after his encounter with the 4 Me109s on the 18th August, where he finds himself ‘Back among Friends’, reunited with the Hurricane of Etherington and other members of his Squadron.
It was a moving moment to depict, encompassing as it does the sense of relief after the desperate life and death struggle of just a few moments before; all this with the added poignancy of knowing that despite surviving this encounter,
Williams would still lose his life in the bravest and most dramatic circumstances only a week later. Wrapped into the piece too for me, is the sad and tragic loss of Solomon just moments before, who, thrust straight into these vicious combats with such bare experience that he, alongside many like him during the Battle, lost his life in his first combat encounter.
All these elements are combined in the painting with the poignant placing of this aerial reunion’s location, over those iconic White Cliffs of Dover, which was also topped out at the time with that most relevant of technological advances to the Battle of Britain, the Chain Home Radar Station at Swingate.
The painting has another kind of locational relevance to me too. Williams was born in South Wales and educated at Ystradgynlais, in the upper part of the Swansea Valley, not twenty miles from where I write this- literally the other side of the mountain that forms the horizon of the view from my window now.
It is touching to see that a few years ago the school he attended there had a ceremony to remember him, placing a plaque (provided by the Battle of Britain Historical Society) on its walls in his memory. The ceremony was also attended by his brother, Master Mariner G. D. Williams, who served with the Merchant Navy on the Atlantic Convoys during the war. In all, a moving reminder of how, even in these quiet hills, the effects of war directly impacted so many families so greatly too.
There seem to be so many threads to this painting, ostensibly about just one of many such encounters in the Battle of Britain, but leading off in so many directions of meaning too. Threads that pull at the heartstrings; not just about the brave sacrifices of ‘The Few’ but unravel into the so many wider stories that underline the tough fabric of national stoicism and endeavour that ‘held the line’ in the face of such tough odds at this turning point in history.