He was born on 13 March 1920 at Cuddlee
Creek in South Australia’s Adelaide Hills. His Australian birth was almost by
the skin of his teeth, as his father, Dick, and his pregnant English-born bride
had only embarked on the Orsova on 22
November 1919, on one of the last ships to bring returning troops and their new
wives home.
Dizzy had an
idyllic childhood on his father’s prosperous fruit farm in the Adelaide Hills.
Dick Fopp grew apples and pears on a large, sloping block but not all of its
acreage was given over to fruit trees. There were some steep sections which
were ideal for a boy with freedom and imagination to hide and hunt, rove and
play. He had a shock of wavy, blonde hair, originally snowy white but which had
darkened into a honey blonde that curled up from his forehead. Fair skinned and
haired, prone to freckles and sunburn under South Australia’s blazing summer
suns, he was an only child who enjoyed his own company, or that of his dog,
Smokey. Even so, he was close friends with his cousin Bob who lived nearby and
the two would range around on their bikes on the weekend and in school
holidays, with Smokey at their wheels. Dizzy was a good swimmer, loved horse
riding, played tennis—there was a tennis court near the house—and in his final
year at St Peter’s College, Adelaide claimed a gymnasium prize in the end of
year prize giving. Although his name did not appear in any of the other school
prize lists he was a whiz with maths and rapid mental calculations.
The Depression
seemed to have bypassed many of the Adelaide Hill families—those on properties
were relatively self sufficient—but even so, Dizzy, like many of the other boys
in the area, supplemented his pocket money by shooting the rabbits that
abounded in plaque proportions on and near the farm. He had a keen eye and was
a good shot, and he always had a supply of pelts when he went into town to
collect the bounty. But Dizzy’s eye was not always glued to his gun site. From
an early age, he turned it skywards and Amy Johnson and Jean Batten, along with
Bert Hinkler and Charles Kingsford Smith, became his role models and heroes. As
Dizzy imagined himself climbing into a cockpit just like his aviation heroes,
his head really was in the clouds and by the time he sailed to England with his
mother after his father’s death in October 1934, he had developed a burning
ambition to fly. He fulfilled that ambition in November 1938 when he joined the
RAFVR and was called up at the outbreak of war. After training he was posted to
17 Squadron on 24 May 1940. After ops in the dying days of the Battle of
France, he participated in the Battle of Britain until his bale out of 3
September.
(This photo was taken when Desmond returned from France)
‘We were scrambled late and did not get to sufficient
altitude to achieve a favourable attacking position from above, with the result
that we had to attack head-on at about 20000 feet, and hope to break up the
large formation of Do 17s, with guns blazing which did separate them
considerably. I had just put a Dornier’s engine out and he was smoking badly
when I saw three Me 110s coming in behind me in line astern. By this time I had
run out of ammunition but decided that as I could not match them for speed I
would turn into them and simulate an attack. This I did and to my astonishment
and joy they broke all around me so I immediately half rolled and dived for the
deck. Unfortunately for me one of them was also below and behind out of sight
and managed to put a cannon shell into my radiator, with the result that all I
heard was a thump and the next second I was sitting in a ball of fire.
Then,
according to Dizzy in a letter on his RAF Museum file:
I therefore left fairly hurriedly by parachute and arrived at
Brentwood still smouldering. In fact the harness of my parachute was still
burning on arrival. I was immediately set upon by the local farmer and had a
bit of a job convincing him that I was British due to my burnt closes—however a
few choice bits of language convinced him!
He was
unrecognisable because of his burns: the whole of his back, legs and face
around the eyes had been seriously burned; he was blind for a month. He was
taken to Brentwood District Hospital. His eye bandages on his eyes had to be
changed daily. There were days when he was in great pain and told his nurse he
wanted to die. When his mother, who lived in Bristol, came to visit, she was
told how desperately ill her son was and asked her not to show her emotions.
She apparently just went in to him and said ‘Now what have you been up to Dizzy?’ She never let him know how ill
he was. Despite the pain and discomfort, he was a good patient and the nurses
were fond of him. He was their own ‘Battle of Britain Boy’ and they were
determined to make him better. A nurse remembers the day he winked at her when
she removed the dressings.
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Desmond Fopp eventually
returned to flying duties and enjoyed a good RAF career including the award of
the AFC in September 1944 for getting an aircraft down safely after a mid air
collision. A sergeant pilot, he was commission on 3 November 1941. He retired
as a Squadron Leader on 13 March 1975. He died on 8 August 2005 at the age of
85. He was the last surviving Australian fighter pilot of the Battle of
Britain. I think my print, so kindly given to me by Desmond Fopp’s cousin, is a
fine way to remember one of our Second World War greats.
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