August 1940, and the Battle of Britain was entering its second month.
Among the pilots of 152 (Hyderabad) Squadron, defending the south coast
- including the vitally important Portland naval base - was 22-year-old Douglas
Shepley of Holmesfield, Derbyshire, who had married his fiancée only weeks
before.
Douglas had already been credited with shooting down two German Me 109s,
on 8th and 11th of August, when on the 12th 152 Squadron was sent to engage a
German unit which had just bombed a radar station on the Isle of Wight. Unfortunately,
two Spitfires never returned from the fray: P9456, piloted by Flight Lieutenant
Withall, and Douglas’s K9999, both believed to have been shot down somewhere
near the Needles.
For Douglas’s family this was the third devastating loss in less than a
year. His sister Jeanne, a nurse in the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry, had been killed in
October 1939 when the liner on which she was returning to England was sunk by a
U boat near Gibraltar. Then, in May 1940, his elder brother, George Rex Shepley
was shot down while dropping supplies to a garrison in Calais (for which he was
posthumously awarded a Distinguished Flying Cross).
In the face of this latest tragedy Douglas’s mother, Emily, and his
widow, Frances, decided to commemorate Douglas and all he meant to them by
buying a Spitfire for the RAF in his name.
The idea of military vehicles and weapons being gifted to the Forces was
not new. During the First World War the government had encouraged people to
donate money towards the purchase of tanks, ambulances, guns and other
equipment, a strategy which had proved very successful and attracted funds from
around the world. Indeed, 152 Squadron itself was named after the Nizam of
Hyderabad, whose donation was big enough to buy a fleet of DH9As. (The then Indian Territories provided many
such ‘gift squadrons’, their origins being reflected in their names and in the
design of their badges; 152’s badge depicted the Nizam’s head-dress and the
words ‘Faithful ally’.)
Having proved so successful earlier, the ‘gifting’ campaign was revived
during the Second War, in particular by Lord Beaverbrook when he ran the newly
created Ministry of Aircraft Production. A list drawn up by the Ministry costed
a single-engine aircraft (usually a Spitfire but sometimes a Hurricane) at £5,700,
rising to £20,000 for a twin- and £40,000 for a four-engined plane.
Having set their sights on a Spitfire, Emily and Frances set to work raising
public awareness about Douglas, organising event after event – dances, tea parties,
whist tournaments and jumble sales, installing collection boxes in theatres and
pubs. The people of Derbyshire and neighbouring south Yorkshire somehow found
money to help: Bolsover miners donated a percentage of their earnings to the
fund and Sheffield ARP held collections at all their posts. In just 15 weeks
the family had raised enough to buy the Shepley Spitfire.
The aircraft chosen was W3649, built by Vickers Armstrong in 1941. The
name Shepley was painted in yellow
below the cockpit. After its inauguration flight in August, a little over a
year since Douglas’s death, it became part of 602 (City of Glasgow) Squadron,
before serving with 303 (Polish) Squadron and then 485 (New Zealand) Squadron. There, Shepley
was requisitioned by Group Captain Francis Beamish, who used it as his personal
plane, flown by him alone. Beamish survived several engagements in the Shepley
Spitfire, but finally went down in the English Channel during a battle with 40
enemy aircraft on 28th March 1942.
As you would expect Douglas Shepley is commemorated on the RAF Memorial
at Runnymede, in honour of those with no known graves, but a reminder of his
and his family’s courage stands closer to home. When the brewer Hardy’s &
Hanson’s built a new pub in Totley, near Holmesfield, it ran a competition to
decide a name. Seymour Shepley, Douglas’s only surviving brother, nominated
‘The Shepley Spitfire’, and the brewery agreed. Seymour pulled the first pint
at the pub commemorating his remarkable family in the winter of 1979.
