Ronald Hawkins: The pilot who escaped the Nazis twice and stole a canoe to get home

Somewhere over Ipswich during the Second World War, a Royal Air Force pilot was preparing to make a rather unusual delivery.

Flying low over a family home, he released a small package into the garden below.

For the children waiting on the ground, the excitement was enormous. They knew what might be coming, and in wartime Britain it was something worth getting excited about.

Chocolate.

The pilot was their Uncle Ron, a young man from Ipswich who had already survived being shot down, escaped German captivity twice, stolen a canoe, crossed mountains and made his way home through occupied Europe.

His full name was Squadron Leader Ronald Hawkins.

By the time he was killed over Belgium in October 1943, aged just 27, he had been awarded both the Military Cross and the Air Force Cross.

But to his family, he was still Uncle Ron, the man who dropped chocolates from the sky.

The boy who learned to fly above Suffolk

Ronald Hawkins was born on 8 August 1916 in Dovercourt, Essex, the son of William James and Flora Meachen Hawkins.

The family moved to Ipswich in 1928, when Ronald was 12, and he attended Northgate School.

They later lived in Roy Avenue, off Felixstowe Road, while his father worked in the food importing trade.

Ronald was an adventurous boy who enjoyed sailing small boats on the River Orwell and around the Suffolk and Essex coastline.

After leaving school, he trained with a firm of chartered mechanical engineers and qualified as a draughtsman.

But his real ambition was in the air.

In December 1935, the Air Ministry advertised for reserve pilots. Ronald applied, and the following year began learning to fly at Sywell in Northamptonshire.

On St George's Day, 23 April 1936, he flew solo for the first time.

He was still only 19.

By April 1937, he had qualified as a pilot, and two months later joined the Straight Corporation, the company operating Ipswich Airport.

The airport had opened in 1930, and by the late 1930s Ronald was helping train the next generation of aviators.

He flew aircraft used to calibrate anti-aircraft and sound-locating equipment, provided training for the Observer Corps and became chief flying instructor at Ipswich Airport.

It was an extraordinary rise for a young man barely out of his teens.

Then came the war.

Shot down over France

When Germany invaded France in May 1940, Ronald was serving with the RAF, flying Fairey Battle aircraft.

The Battle was a three-seat light bomber that had entered service only a few years earlier but was already dangerously vulnerable to modern German fighters.

During the disastrous campaign in France, RAF Battle squadrons suffered appalling losses.

Ronald was shot down by a German Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter.

He managed to parachute from his aircraft and survived the descent, but found himself stranded in a country rapidly falling into German hands.

For three days, according to the family's account, he remained free south-west of Paris before eventually being captured.

He was taken to a prisoner-of-war compound.

For many servicemen, that might have been the beginning of years behind barbed wire.

For Ronald, it was merely the beginning of a rather extraordinary journey.

He escaped.

The stolen canoe and an unfortunate discovery

Ronald initially headed north towards the French coast around Honfleur and Deauville, hoping to find a boat that might carry him back to Britain.

There were none available.

Undeterred, he headed west.

At some point during his journey, he found a canoe and stole it.

His plan, according to his family's recollections, was to paddle across to the Channel Islands, where he hoped to find a route home.

It was a desperate undertaking. The waters between France and the islands are treacherous enough in peacetime, let alone for a fugitive travelling alone in a stolen canoe.

But Ronald was an experienced sailor, having spent his younger years on the Orwell.

He made the crossing.

Unfortunately, the Germans had got there first.

The family account says the islands had been occupied the previous day.

The Channel Islands had fallen to German forces at the end of June and beginning of July 1940, becoming the only part of the British Isles occupied by Germany during the war.

Ronald had escaped occupied France only to find himself arriving in another occupied territory.

There was nothing for it but to turn around.

He paddled back to France.

It is difficult not to admire the almost absurd determination of a man who, having escaped a German prison camp and stolen a canoe, found his intended refuge occupied and simply set off again.

And he was still a very long way from home.

Across France and over the mountains

Ronald's next plan was to travel south through France towards the Mediterranean.

His family's account describes him walking and cycling, sometimes using stolen bicycles, as he made his way towards Marseille.

He was eventually captured again.

Once more he managed to escape.

This time he travelled towards the Pyrenees, the mountains separating France from Spain, following one of the routes used by Allied servicemen attempting to escape German-controlled Europe.

The journey was dangerous.

Airmen and soldiers making their way towards Spain faced the threat of arrest, betrayal, exposure and exhaustion. Even reaching neutral Spain did not necessarily mean immediate freedom.

Another account of Ronald's escape, recorded in the book From a Hard Place to a Rock by Timandra Slade, describes how he encountered Captain Chris Waters of the Royal Engineers in Vichy France.

The two men subsequently crossed the Pyrenees with other escapees, only to be detained again.

Their journey eventually took them through Spain to Gibraltar.

From there, Ronald finally made it back to Britain.

He had survived being shot down, repeated capture, an extraordinary journey through occupied France and a mountain crossing.

He was awarded the Military Cross in March 1941 for his escape and evasion.

It was an unusual distinction for an RAF flying officer, and recognition of courage displayed not in the cockpit but in the struggle to get home.

Back in Suffolk, and back in the air

Ronald might reasonably have felt that he had done enough.

But he returned to flying duties.

For around two years, he helped train Polish pilots at RAF Newton in Nottinghamshire, passing on the knowledge and experience he had acquired.

His work earned him the Air Force Cross in April 1943.

He also held command appointments at RAF stations including Snailwell, near Newmarket, and Matlaske in Norfolk.

Eventually, he returned to operational flying.

By 1943, he was commanding No. 3 Squadron, equipped with the powerful Hawker Typhoon fighter.

The Typhoon was fast, heavily armed and capable of carrying out devastating low-level attacks on enemy targets.

But those attacks were also exceptionally dangerous.

Pilots frequently flew within range of German anti-aircraft guns, where a few seconds of concentrated fire could bring an aircraft down.

Ronald knew those dangers better than most.

And yet there were still moments when the war seemed almost absurdly ordinary.

His nephew later recalled that Ronald would fly low over the family home and drop packages into the garden.

Inside was chocolate, a rare treat for children growing up in wartime Britain.

It is a lovely image of a man who had survived so much finding a small way to bring happiness to his family.

A fighter pilot, a decorated escapee and a commander responsible for other men's lives, taking the trouble to deliver sweets to children below.

The last flight

On 5 October 1943, Ronald was leading an operation over occupied Belgium.

His squadron was attacking targets in the Ghent area, including the Sinclair petroleum refinery at Langerbrugge, roughly six miles north of the city.

During the low-level operation, his Hawker Typhoon, serial number JP733, came under German anti-aircraft fire.

The aircraft was shot down.

Ronald Hawkins was killed.

He was 27 years old.

The boy who had learned to sail on the Orwell, flown solo at 19, escaped across Europe and returned to become a squadron commander would never see Ipswich again.

He was buried at Ghent City Cemetery in Belgium, where his grave remains today.

His parents, William and Flora Hawkins, were recorded in the military records as being from Ipswich, although Flora had died in 1940, before her son's final mission.

His name was added to the town's Roll of Honour, one of hundreds of local lives lost during the Second World War.

Remembering Uncle Ron

There is something particularly moving about Ronald Hawkins' story because so much of it reads like an adventure novel.

The stolen canoe. The occupied islands. The borrowed and stolen bicycles. The second escape. The mountains. The journey to Gibraltar.

And, eventually, the remarkable achievement of becoming a squadron commander at just 27.

But the adventures, medals and military records tell only part of the story.

The Ipswich War Memorial Project has preserved family recollections that allow us to glimpse the young man behind the uniform.

A boy who loved sailing on the Orwell.

An apprentice draughtsman who wanted to fly.

A brother, a son and an uncle who had not forgotten the children waiting excitedly in the garden.

We cannot know what Ronald might have done had he survived the war.

He might have become one of the pioneers of Britain's post-war aviation industry, returned to instructing young pilots or found some entirely different adventure.

Instead, his life ended in a Belgian field at the age of 27.

He escaped the Germans twice, crossed occupied Europe and returned home against extraordinary odds.

But the moment worth remembering most may be the simplest of all.

A little package falling from an aeroplane into an Ipswich garden, and a group of children laughing as they discovered what Uncle Ron had brought them.

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