The Association has learned of the death of Lt Cdr Alfred Roy D Hawkes RN in Summer 2021.
From Records
Roy served as RNVR and RN from 1941 to 1958
As a Pilot he became a Flying Instructor, flew Fixed and Rotary Wing aircraft and Float Planes.
From Fly Navy View From the Cockpit 1945 – 2000 Edited by Charles Manning
Lieutenant Roy Hawkes
Pilot, Sikorsky S.55, 848 Squadron, Malaya, 1953
The Malayan ‘Emergency’, which began in 1948 when three European estate managers of rubber plantations in different parts of Malaya were gunned down in their offices and rapidly escalated into a full-scale communist insurrection, lasted eight years and saw much bitter guerrilla fighting in jungle and swamp between the British Army and Communist Terrorists (CTs) intent upon taking over what was then the Federated Malay States. 848 Naval Air Squadron with it s twelve US-built Sikorsky S55 helicopters entered the fray in 1952 and brought a new flexibility to the army in Malaya whose only way of reaching the CTs up to then was footslogging through the jungle.
In 1953 I was at 848 Squadron’s advance base in Kuala Lumpur where the flying task was a mixture of troop-lifting, supply drops and intelligence work, and ‘Casevac’ or Casualty Evacuation. On 13 February the well-rehearsed Casevac procedure swung into action when an emergency call was received from a Special Police Force patrol in the jungle, just to the east of Malaya’s central mountain spine; they had encountered a party of CTs, killed two of them, but unfortunately injured a number of innocent aborigines in the crossfire. The late Geoff Luff and I were soon airborne in WV 192 heading for an army airstrip near Tapah where the 1st Manchesters had organised a refuelling bowser – a 45-gallon drum of Aviation Gasoline on the back of a truck. The supply of fuel was by an orally activated syphon through a flexible hose, and the regiment’s fiery colonel was there in person to urge his soldiery to greater efforts of suck: ‘This is an EMERGENCY! Don’t waste time spitting it out, man! SWALLOW it!’
But despite his best efforts, and theirs, to speed us on our way, our first attempt to cross the ridge had to be abandoned. The morning mists over the central mountain ridge were slow to clear. Eventually, accompanied by an army AOP Auster, we threaded our way up a river valley and succeeded in getting over the ridge into better weather beyond. The Auster pilot guided us to a well-prepared clearing in a bamboo forest where Geoff disembarked with our passengers, and RAMC Medical Officer and an army intelligence officer, to size up the situation.
The doctor needed time to prepare his patients, so we shut down our engine – not a thing we often did in such remote locations. When everything had stopped I leant out of the cockpit to find myself gazing down the barrel of a ‘friendly’ rifle that someone has propped against the side of the aircraft. One had to get used to that sort of thing.
Taking care not to split families, we flew out the wounded with their close relatives – four men, two women and a baby. Then there was the amorous deaf mute who had become a sort of camp-follower and was making a nuisance of herself, able to wreck the best-laid ambush. The unfortunate girl must have been utterly confused by the trauma of the past forty-eight hours, but still managed to hoist her sarong a couple of contours higher than necessary while boarding the aircraft for her flight into ‘re-settlement’. Oddly though, the poor girl did elect to cover her normally exposed breasts.
The Police Lieutenant and his Malay patrol were left behind, a motley band who, despite appearances, were steadily getting their section of the jungle under control, establishing order out of insurrection. I was saddened to learn that the lieutenant was killed in a skirmish with terrorists soon afterwards.
Just before nightfall we were ready for our final departure. The weather was closing in. The way home, down the west side of the mountains, became a tunnel down a valley between tree-lined slopes and a low roof of swirling, lowering cloud and the tumbling river below. Once again we had to place our whole faith in the army Auster pilot who led the way. At that stage we had no radio contact with either him or the forces on the ground, but he knew what he was doing and in the last vestiges of the brief tropical twilight we punched out of a hole at the end of the valley, just before it self-sealed.
From there it was all downhill to Tapah, where the 1st Manchesters in their tented camp on the edge of the jungle provided shelter for the night and generous hospitality. At a formal dinner, the tables groaning with all the regiment’s priceless silver, our immaculately dressed hosts seemed to take genuine pleasure in the presence of two naval officers in scruffy jungle-green.
Apart from the routine work, there was always something new for helicopters to do, like Target Marking.
To the uninitiated, terrorist camps and aboriginal settlements were easily confused, but with experience it became apparent that, in deep jungle, the average terrorist clearing would be neater; unlike the Chinese terrorists, aborigines never planted their vegetables in neat rows. The rule could break down, as when the terrorists employed aboriginal gardeners, and sometimes, if they had access to ‘protection’ food from a Malay village, their camp might not have a cultivation at all, in which case the only thing that gave it away was a glimpse of bared ground underneath the continuous canopy of foliage. Closer inspection might then reveal the huts of a permanent camp.
Flying a representative from HQ Malaya over a known trouble area one day, we located such a camp. Normally an army patrol would have been inserted by air to deal with it, but on this occasion for reasons best know to itself, the Royal Air Force Command insisted it be annihilated by high-level saturation bombing. And furthermore, since I had found it and knew where it was, I was to be their Pathfinder and mark the tarted for them. As I said, there was always something new, but for me this was a bigger than usual step into the unknown.
Come the appointed day, 29 April, I had a verry difficult job to do in a noisy helicopter. First I had to relocate the target, and then loiter far enough away not to arouse suspicion: CTs had a reputation for fighting only where they held the initiative, and any terrorists with normal faculties would leg it at the first sign of unusual air activity. But at the same time I had to be close enough to pinpoint and mark the camp when ordered in by the bombers at, literally, sixty seconds’ notice, this being the minimum time for the bomb-aimers to make their final adjustments.
I relocated the camp without difficulty and flew past in what I hoped was a nonchalant fashion until I guessed I was out of earshot. Then, desperately hoping I was keeping station on the correct group of trees, in an area where look-alike trees grow by the million, I circled slowly into the steamy air until, high overhead, a formation of Lincoln heavy bombers came into view, running in on their map reference – a sight so awe-inspiring that the numbers have probably grown over the years and I will not try to say how many. At the last possible moment for them to make their final aiming correction actually less than one minute, came the radio call:
‘Mark!’
Now it was all up to me. I sped forward just above the forest canopy and, to my intense relief, found the terrorist camp right on cue and slowed up to allow Naval Airman Watters, a non-aircrew Ordnance Mechanic who had volunteered for the trip, to ignite and heave out a smoke canister. I think we avoided being shot at by the terrorists, but in any case the prospect of being peppered with bandit buckshot was considerably overshadowed by the imminent arrival of a rain of bombs from above, so I exited the scene in double quick time and took cover behind the nearest rise.
The bombing was commendably accurate and utterly devastating, but, in my humble opinion, of questionable value as a method of terrorist control. Perhaps others agreed: as far as I know, Helicopter Target Marking did not catch on.