BLACK AMERICA LET US BE PROUD INTRODUCINGPilot Officer John Henry Smythe (1915-1996). An unsung hero.

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I WAS AWESTRUCK AND FULL OF PRIDE YOU WILL BE TOO!

They served faithfully in a war that was not their own for the good of all humankind.

Had Hitler and his Nazis won WW2, the consequences for black people everywhere would have been too hideous to contemplate - - - Hitler believed that all black people should be eradicated. Johnny Smythe read Hitler's Mein Kampf before joining the RAF

Pilot Officer John Henry Smythe (1915-1996)

John Henry Smythe was born in Sierra Leone. He served with the Sierra Leone Defence Corps before volunteering for the RAF as a navigator. On the night of 18th November 1943 he was the navigator aboard a Short Stirling III heavy bomber of No 623 Squadron, one of 395 aircraft dispatched to attack the German city of Mannheim. The aircraft was crippled by anti-aircraft fire, and the crew was forced to parachute from the stricken aircraft. They were captured and spent the next 18 months in a prisoner of war camp. After the war Smythe stayed in the RAF until 1951 and in 1978 he received an OBE. He died in 1996 in Thame, Oxfordshire.

Johnny Smythe did not have to go to war.He was one of 55,000 people from Africa who volunteered to help Britain stop Hitler’s Germany. After Johnny’s plane was shot down over Germany, he spent 18 months in a Prisoner of War camp. He remembered what happened after the Russian Army liberated his camp. ‘They took me to a town near the camp and
I watched as they looted. A pretty German woman was crying because they had taken all her valuables. I wanted to help her but the Russians wouldn’t listen. I had hated the Germans and wanted to kill them all, but something changed inside me when I saw
her tears and the hopelessness on her face.’

Johnny was a Royal Air Force navigator who helped pilots flying planes like these Lancaster bombers stay on course during bombing raids. He was shot down over Germany on his 28th mission. Johnny volunteered to join the RAF because he hated Hitler for his racism. Jesse Owens won four gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympics but Hitler refused to shake his hand because he was African American. When he was captured, Johhny remembers; ‘The Germans couldn’t believe their eyes.
I’m sure that’s what saved me from being shot immediately. To see a black man – and an officer at that – was more than they could come to terms with. They just stood there gazing.’

Looking down on a Lancaster Bomber attack,Hamburg, 1943 ‘We were flying at 16,000 feet when the fighters came out of nowhere. They raked the fuselage and there were flames everywhere. Then the searchlights caught us. I was hit by shrapnel.


Pieces came from underneath, piercing my abdomen, going through my side. Another came through my seat and into my groin. I heard the pilot ordering us to bail out! We had some rough ones before but this seemed to be the end. I have tried to forget that night for 50 years.’ Stalag Luft I was a prisoner of war camp for almost 9,000 Allied airmen. Johnny helped other
prisoners try to escape but did not try to break out himself. He said, ‘I don’t think a six-foot-five black man would’ve got very far in Pomerania.’ Today there is a memorial at Stalag Luft I. In 2001, veterans and their families from America, Britain, Germany and Russia met at the camp in the spirit of reconciliation.

1915 Born in Freetown capitalof Sierra Leone.1940 Arrives in UK as RAF volunteer
1941 First mission 1943 On 28th mission over Germany, Smythe’s plane gets shot down
1943–1945 Stalag Luft I. POW camp. After the war, worked at Colonial Office
1948 travelled with Empire Windrush to bring 500 West Indian ex-servicemen and workers to UK
1950 Passed law exams; 1951 Married fiancée from Grenada. Sailed back to Freetown;
1961 Solicitor General of Sierra Leone. 1963 Lecture tour of the eastern United States
1978 Receives OBE –Order of the British Empire. 1993 Moved back to England
with his wife and 5 children; 1996 Died in Thame, Oxfordshire.

(Courtesy Imperial War Museum)