Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

A fine and poignant Battle of Britain Fighter Ace’s D.F.C., A.F.C. group of seven awarded to Spitfire pilot, Squadron Leader T. S. ‘Wimpy’ Wade, Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve - undoubtedly a character, and respected by his contemporaries as one of 92 Squadron’s most capable pilots. Joining the Squadron at the same time as Brian Kingcome and Geoffrey ‘Boy’ Wellum, Wade went on to form a close friendship with another of the Squadron’s Aces - Tony Bartley.

Wade’s ability in the air was reflected by the number of his victories, damaged, shared or otherwise, but his aggression and willingness to get close in and take risks was also reflected by the number of times he had to make a forced-landing or was shot down after a ‘dogfight’. In total - on 5 separate occasions, 3 of which occurred during the Battle - including his narrowest escape, when waiting upside down in a Spitfire which he expected to catch fire, on Lewes Race Course, having been shot down by cross-fire from a formation of Dornier 17s....

Wade was subsequently employed as Chief Test Pilot to Hawker Aircraft, and after multiple dices with death during the war, he finally succumbed to a peace time test flight, and was killed whilst flying a Hawker P 1081 over Sussex, 3 April 1951

Distinguished Flying Cross, G.VI.R., reverse officially dated ‘1941’; Air Force Cross, G.VI.R., reverse officially dated ‘1944’; 1939-45 Star, 1 clasp, Battle of Britain; Air Crew Europe Star; Defence and War Medals 1939-45; Air Efficiency Award, G.VI.R., 1st issue (Act. Sqn. Ldr. T. S. Wade. R.A.F.V.R.) mounted court-style for wear, generally good very fine (7) £50,000-£70,000

D.F.C. London Gazette 16 July 1941:
‘This officer has displayed great skill and determination in his numerous engagements with the enemy and has destroyed at least 6 of their aircraft. His efforts have contributed materially to the successes achieved by the squadron.’

The original recommendation states: ‘This officer has been engaged continually in operational flying since May 1940, and has proved to be a pilot of skill and determination and has contributed much to the success of his squadron. He has destroyed 6 enemy aircraft, shared in the destruction of 2 more making his total destroyed 6 and 3/4 and has probably destroyed a further 6.’

A.F.C. London Gazette 1 September 1944.
The original recommendation states: ‘This officer has been commanding officer at this unit since October 1943, and previously was Flight Commander in the Fighter Wing of the Central Gunnery School, from its formation in August 1941. During his whole career, he has shown conspicuous devotion to duty and outstanding flying ability. He has been largely responsible for the success of the school in improving marksmanship throughout Fighter Command. In particular, he has completed very close formation flying with another Spitfire aircraft, in order to make aimed releases of 500lb bombs in 60 and 70 to provide photographic evidence to clear this type of aircraft for operations in these conditions. His enthusiasm and efficiency have always been of the highest order.’

Trevor Sydney Wade was born in 1920, and educated at Tonbridge School. He joined the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve in 1938, and carried out pilot training at No. 19 E. & R.F.T.S., Gatwick. Wade was called up at the outbreak of the Second World War, and commissioned in April 1940. He was posted for operational flying with 92 Squadron (Spitfires), and joined the Squadron during it’s recuperation after a mauling in the Battle of France and covering the evacuation from Dunkirk. Tony Bartley [see lot 138] records Wade’s arrival at the Squadron along with some other notable characters:

‘May 26th [1940]... Brian Kingcome moved in with his bulldog ‘Zeke’. They looked and acted somewhat alike. Two other recruits were Geoffrey Wellum and Wimpy Wade. Geoff was 18 years old and very unsure of himself. Wimpy borrowed my Spitfire to get in some more time on the type, and straightaway slow rolled it at nought feet over the airfield, so was forthwith accepted in our league.’ (Smoke Trails in the Sky refers)

The Squadron had lost two Flight Commanders and the Squadron Leader, Roger Bushell, over Calais on 23 May 1940. Kingcome was posted to 92 Squadron as Flight Commander, and he revelled in the spirit and personalities of his new Spitfire Squadron, ’To my mind 92 Squadron always had the special ingredient which sets certain people or groups apart from the rest - a small, indefinable quality in the alchemy that gives an edge, a uniqueness. This quality can never be duplicated or planned for, but somehow it comes into being and is aptly called ‘spirit’. It always begins at the top, and 92’s exceptional spirit undoubtedly had its origins in the outstanding personalities of the original squadron and flight commanders. It then continued to flourish in the fertile soil of the rich mix of characters who made up this exceptional fighting unit: determined, committed young men, intent on squeezing the last drop of living from whatever life might be left to them at the same time as they refused to take themselves or their existence too seriously.

They came from all walks of life... there was Neville Duke and ‘Wimpy’ Wade, both outstanding airmen who survived the war with distinguished and much-decorated careers and became household names as test pilots. There was also Allan Wright, an ex-Cranwell cadet, extremely bright and professorial even in those far-off days, but a determined and successful pilot, and then the youngest of them all Geoff Wellum, aged 17 and known as ‘Boy’ because of his age. And there were Don Kingaby and ‘Titch’ Havercroft, two of the R.A.F.’s most successful NCO pilots, both of whom finished up as Wing Commanders, Don having a unique distinction in earning a D.S.O... and three D.F.M.s... Above all, there was Bob Tuck, extrovert and flamboyant... In the air he was a total professional, none was more highly respected.’ (A Willingness to Die, B. Kingcome refers)

The Battle of Britain
The Squadron was withdrawn to Pembrey for a rest on convoy patrols. Wade shared in the Squadron’s frustration at this prospect, and thought that they ‘languished in South Wales.’ They also carried out Night Patrols, and on one such occasion Wade found himself in a spot of bother over Swansea Bay. Met with awful weather conditions and R/T failure, he was forced to bale out over Exeter, 28 July 1940. His Spitfire, N 3287, crashed two miles south-west of Chudleigh.

Wade moved with ‘A’ Flight to Bibury:
‘At the beginning of August and to our disgust and despondency A Flight was moved to Bibury and put mainly on night fighter patrols. This was the last straw, when every day we heard on the news what our old friends in 11 Group were doing in the front line. Bibury was a pretty little Cotswold village, and a great contrast to the sordidness of Llanelly. We were billeted in an old coaching house that belonged to a widow who trained racehorses.

The second day after we arrived, we were attacked, without warning by a Junkers 88. I [Tony Bartley] had just finished a luncheon sandwich, and was watching what I had thought was an Oxford trainer circle the airfield, when, to my horror, it dived down at our dispersal point, machine guns blazing. A stream of bullets ploughed into the ground behind my heels as I dived into a ditch, while a stick of bombs came tumbling out of its belly. I lay mesmerised by the falling projectiles, and could not take my eyes off them until they disappeared into the ground with a succession of mighty crumps when everything was obliterated by smoke and debris. The rear gunner fired a parting burst as the Ju 88 disappeared into cloud.

Pat Patterson, Wimpy Wade and I leapt into our Spitfires, and took off after him. In my haste I omitted my flying helmet, and was in consequence, out of touch with Ops Room’s radio communication which could have directed me in the enemy’s pursuit, so I lost him and returned to base. When I had switched off at my dispersal point and disembarked, I discovered that my flight sergeant had been rapped over the knuckles with a bullet that had first transfixed my aeroplane, two adjacent Spitfires had been written off, and our nearest aerodrome anti-aircraft defence gunner had been shot dead through the heart.’ (Smoke Trails in the Sky refers)

Wade met with success on 19 August 1940, when he shared a Ju 88 over Southampton. His Spitfire was hit by return fire, and he made a forced landing at Norton, Selsey, escaping just before it exploded. His combat reports gives the following:
‘Firing short bursts... closing to about 150 yards, using normal sighting.... after I had expended my ammunition I broke away to the left and observed that the port engine of enemy aircraft was just turning over and smoke coming from the starboard, I continued doing dummy attacks on enemy aircraft whilst it was gradually losing height. Return fire was observed from coming underneath the enemy aircraft. Some 3 minutes later smoke came out from both sides of my engine when half a mile south of Selsey Bill. By this time flames were coming from my engine and fumes filled my cockpit. I got out unhurt, and eventually the aircraft blew up.’

In early September, 92 Squadron returned to 11 Group on the front-line of the Battle at R.A.F. Biggin Hill. Shortly thereafter, the C.O., Sanders suffered a burns injury and Bob Stanford Tuck had been posted to 257 Squadron leaving Brian Kingcome to take over as Acting C.O; he commanded 92 Squadron for approximately six weeks during the height of the Battle of Britain, leading them on around 60 operations. Having entered the fray on 9 September, the Squadron claimed a total of 127 aircraft destroyed by year end.

Scrambled often multiple times daily, Wade’s personal record for the remainder of the Battle reads as follows:
10 September Dornier 17, Destroyed (Shared), 10 miles SW Biggin Hill
11 September Heinkel 111, Destroyed, Maidstone
15 September Me Bf 109E, Destroyed (Probable), Maidstone area
18 September Me Bf 109E, Damaged, Folkestone area
20 September Me Bf 109E, Damaged, Dover area
22 September Dornier 17, Destroyed, Lewes
12 October Me Bf 109E, Destroyed, Rochester area
12 October Me Bf 109E, Destroyed (Probable), Rochester area
12 October Me Bf 109E, Damaged, Rochester area
26 October Me Bf 109E, Destroyed (Probable), Tunbridge Wells
29 October Me Bf 109E, Destroyed (Probable), East Grinstead

Of particular note were the results of a patrol on 12 October 1940, when Wade was involved in the damage or destruction of at least 3 enemy aircraft in one dogfight over Rochester. The patrol combat report adds the following details:
‘11 Spitfires took off at 15.00 ..... A.A. was observed in the direction of the Thames Estuary, and on investigation proved to be directed at a straggling wave of Me.109’s flying eastward.... at 20 - 25,000 feet... their numbers 30 plus....
F/Lt. Kingcome, leading the Squadron was attacked by approximately 12 Me.109’s but after taking evasive action... was able to attack from dead astern.... P/O Wade made a number of attacks on an Me.109 which he chased down to 2,000 feet, in the Dover area, and was then smoking enough to be claimed as damaged.
A second e/a was destroyed... by P/O Wade, who made two attacks, the second closing to within 15 yards, resulting in the pilot baling out... P/O Wade then fired from full starboard beam at another Messerchmitt which immediately started pouring glycol, rolled slowly to the right and dived vertically. With his remaining ammunition he engaged a third which dived, smoking, to 4,000 feet approximately, before he lost sight of it....’

During this period of high intensity, Wade joined in with the rest of his Squadron burning the candle at both ends at the White Hart and The Red House. After one such night at the latter, 13 September 1940, Tony Bartley recalled, ‘My batman called me at 4.30am with a cup of tea. I struggled into my clothes and bumped into Wimpy Wade in the corridor. He had thrown his uniform over his pyjamas...’

Wade was also amongst those in the Squadron who pursued speed on land as well as in the air:
‘The first opportunity I [Bartley] had, I located and bought, with parental financial support, a twelve cylinder Lincoln Zephyr coupe. It went for £100, as no civilian could get enough petrol to sustain its voracious consumption. Bob Holland had a supercharged Bentley, Kingcome had been lent the SS 100 racer which belonged to one of the MacNeal twins, and Wimpy Wade, a Packard convertible. None was licensed or insured, and the local constabulary were fully aware of this omission, and once in a while, a police sergeant would come up to the airfield to remonstrate to our Adjutant who would take him to the bar in the officers’ mess to which we were summoned. After copious drinks and choruses of ‘Good old Serg’ the reprimand would turn into a warning, not of prosecution, but of the date of the next police road check-up of all unlicensed vehicles. We filled our cars with 100-octane fuel from the aircraft petrol bowsers, without conscience, and everyone turned a blind eye.’

Wade rode his luck again when he attacked a formation of Dorniers, 27 September 1940. He claimed to damage one, before being hit by return fire and making a forced landing at Lewes Race Track. His Spitfire’s radiator was shot up, and the aircraft turned over upon landing. Wade was trapped upside down in the cockpit, but fortunately for him the aircraft did not catch fire.

After the Battle ... The Rest of the War
On 26 November 1940, Wade claimed another Destroyed (Probable) Dornier 17 over the Thames Estuary. He Destroyed another Me Bf 109E over the channel, 2 December 1940 - once again he was hit by return fire and force landed at Gravesend. Still operating Spitfires from Biggin Hill, Wade went on to add:
8 May 1941 Me Bf 109E, Destroyed, Dungeness-Ashford
16 May Me Bf 109E, Destroyed (Shared), 15 miles south of Dover
16 June Me Bf 109E, Destroyed, Le Touquet
21 June Me Bf 109E, Destroyed (Shared), south of Boulogne
23 June Me Bf 109E, Destroyed (Probable), Hardelot

Of the above, the action on 16 June 1941 is notable in that it was recorded as a 90 minute dogfight led by Kingcome against upwards of 15 Me. 109’s, during which:
‘P/O Wade, after being attacked himself 2 or 3 times, got in a number of bursts at an e/a which was attacking F/Lt Kingcome, from varying angles and varying ranges from 200 to 50 yards. After his first burst the port side of the e/a’s engine caught fire, it dived steeply and rolling on its back, crashed into the sea; he was then engaged by another, and getting in to a position to fire from above found his ammunition exhausted.’ (Combat Report refers)

Wade was posted for a rest to 123 Squadron (Spitfires), Turnhouse at the end of June 1941. Having been awarded a long overdue D.F.C., Wade was posted to 602 Squadron (Spitfires) at Kenley in September 1941. The Squadron were employed flying sweeps and escorts, and Wade was shot down on 17 September 1941. Once again he emerged relatively unscathed.

Hawker and Beyond

Wade was eventually to enter the Test Pilot arena, and his journey there is described in Geoffrey Dorman’s British Test Pilots:
‘His experience in action eminently suited him for his next post which was an instructor to an Operational Training Unit, which was followed by a course which sets a seal on any flying instructor’s career, an instructor’s course at the Central Flying School. From C.F.S. he was posted as a fighter-pilot/gunnery-instructor to the Central School of Gunnery, and then for three months as Gunnery Officer to No. 9 Group Headquarters in which post Wimpy became responsible for all gunnery instruction in fighter operational training units. His good work there singled him out for what, to one of his enquiring mind, must have been his most interesting war-time job. He was appointed O.C. Flying, Air Fighting Development Unit, responsible for testing performance of captured enemy fighters, and comparing them with Allied equivalents. For his work in this branch, he was awarded the A.F.C. in 1944.

During the last months of the war he was sent to the U.S.A. and Canada for flight trials on captured Japanese fighters, and to gain experience on new American types. When the war ended, his experience ranged over 65 different types.

Soon after the war ended, he turned his hand to aeronautical journalism and joined the editorial staff of The Aeroplane. There he was principally concerned in trying out new types of civil aeroplane.... After little more than a year of pen-pushing and flying the small aeroplanes described so graphically as those with “pop-bottle motors”, Wimpy yearned for real flying again. He was never really happy tethered to an office and living in London, though he compromised to a certain extent by living in a house-boat moored in the River Thames at Chelsea. Then, towards the end of 1947, Bill Humble, Chief Test Pilot to Hawker Aircraft needed help in testing the growing production of Furies, Sea Furies, and other Hawker products which were rolling out from the factory. He knew Wimpy’s capacity as a pilot; he knew Wimpy could never be happy pen-pushing, and he offered him the job as assistant test pilot.

Wimpy threw off the dust of London with pleasure, sold his house-boat, and moved lock, stock and barrel into an old manor house on the banks of the Thames within easy distance of the Hawker test airfield at Langley, some 20 miles west of London. His big chance came in the beginning of 1948, when Bill Humble was appointed sales manager of Hawkers. He had for some time contemplated giving up the very exacting work as a test pilot of fighters with ever-increasing speeds, but he would not do so until he was satisfied that he found a successor who was fully up to the work. When he found that Wimpy filled that bill, he gladly gave way to him after he (Bill) had completed over 15 years as a test pilot.

Wimpy’s first big job was the testing of the first Hawker jet-propelled fighter, the P/1040 [Hawker Sea Hawk]. This was Sydney Camm’s latest and greatest design, and there has been most complete co-operation between this great designer and the new Chief Test Pilot in producing yet another world-beater.

In 1948 I watched, with a number of aviation journalists, a first public demonstration of this fighter... Most of us had seen the first demonstration of famous aeroplanes; but we were all agreed on one point. We had none of us ever seen a new aeroplane demonstrated in such a superb manner. Wimpy told me he had done something less than 10 hours flying on it, but put it through a superb display of low-level aerobatics at speeds which must have been very nearly sonic, that I knew he was pulling my leg, but he had not flown it much more than 25 hours. Several times, as he swept past us, after a dive, at a speed which we estimated must have been over 650 mph, clouds of vapour were formed which seemingly wrapped the monoplane in a cocoon of transparent woolly vapour. His climbs in an inverted position, to a height which took him almost out of sight into the blue, convinced us that Sydney Camm had produced another aeroplane which, in its own class, was the greatest in the world....

He flew the Sea Hawk in the S.B.A.C. jet race of 1950 during which he made the fastest lap at 584 mph, which won for him the Geoffrey de Havilland Trophy for the fastest time of the year in any British air race. At the Air Show of 1950 he flew the 1081 at a speed which must have been near that of sound. He has a good head on him and is not merely a pilot. So when that time comes, as it must, when his reactions have grown too slow with the years, for him to continue, he should be assured of a high place on the administrative side of the company...

He considers that his narrowest escape was when waiting upside down in a Spitfire which he expected to catch fire, on Lewes Race Course after being shot down by cross-fire from a formation of Dornier 17s during the Battle of Britain... In lighter vein he is also inclined to include his successful survival from a deck landing course at a Royal Naval Air Station early in 1949. He has flown 2,200 hours and 72 different types of machines.’

Poignantly, despite all of the above experience, and the promise of a comfortable retirement when the time came, Wade’s time came all to soon. He travelled to the USA on an exchange scheme, taking the opportunity to visit his old squadron friend Tony Bartley whilst out there. Having flown various American service aircraft, Wade returned to Hawker. Squadron Leader Wade was killed whilst testing a P1081, 3 April 1951. He crashed near Ringmer, and his funeral took place at St. John’s Crematorium, Woking.

An unpublished letter from Tony Bartley (included with the lot), written a number of years after Wade’s death, gives the following:
‘Just before Wimpy was killed he came out to Hollywood where he stayed in my home, and one evening, confessed to me that he had lost his nerve test flying. I told him to, for God sakes, quit while he was ahead. Could happen to any of us, but he obviously disregarded my advice and warning. He was one of the most skilful pilots I knew and flew with. Maybe it was his natural conceit forbade him to do this, but in any event, he was a very nice fellow I was very fond of, and a very sad and unnecessary loss in my book.’

Sold with copied research, photographic images of the recipient, and an original letter from Tony Bartley concerning Wade’s death.