Jerry Billing and ML135

by Bob Swaddling

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The new Eduard Spitfire Mk IXc (late) is a marvelous kit. I call it the 1:48 scale version of the excellent Tamiya 1:32 scale kit.

The kit decals include markings for a French pilot, a Czech pilot, a Polish pilot, and English pilot, and two for a Canadian pilot, both of the same aircraft, serial number ML135, YO-D of 401 Squadron Royal Canadian Air Force, 126 Wing of the Second Tactical Air Force flown by Jerry Billing of Essex Ontario.

Jerry Billing had arrived from Canada after having served on Malta and being sent home for a rest as an instructor which he detested. He kept applying to go back overseas but was denied. He got attention by looping the Ambassador Bridge, which links Windsor Ontario to Detroit Michigan, in a Tiger Moth. He was reported and told if he kept up with senseless flying like that he would be posted overseas. He promptly did it again and his punishment was just what he wanted. He went to England and was told to go to the RCAF manning station but he went AWOL and travelled to Biggin Hill. He asked Lorne Cameron the C.O. at 401 Sq. if he could use a good pilot and was accepted. He told them that he was AWOL and they said that they would fix that up.

He flew many sorties in different Spitfires. By D-Day he had been more or less un-officially assigned a Spitfire of his own, ML135. He used to go out and help his rigger and fitter take care of her. You wanted your rigger and fitter to be your friends and Jerry used to bring them hot meals from the Officers mess on cold rainy nights when they were doing an engine change outside. He remembers how they slopped invasion stripes on her. There was no time for careful masking or measuring. It was distemper paint anyway and could be washed off. In fact D-Day was poor weather and when they flew through rain the stripes were all but gone when they got home. Jerry flew YO-D ML135 on D-Day and the Luftwaffe was nowhere to be found. The next day they were making a sweep over the beachhead and Jerry nailed a Junkers Ju 88. When he got back to Tangmere the chap driving the fuel bowser was from Essex Ontario, Jerry’s home town. He had Jerry pose with ML135 and stood on the fuel bowser and took Jerry’s picture. Jerry never saw the photo until 38 years later when the chap gave it to him in the Essex Legion. It had been folded but was still a decent wartime shot of Jerry and ML135 on June 7th 1944.

Jerry went on from there. Of course on occasion other pilots flew his mount but she was mostly his.

When the wing went to the continent Jerry was still flying ML135, YO-D based at B4 at Beny-sur Mer. By now she was called “D-for Dorothy” and had the name emblazoned on her just below the windscreen. I always asked Jerry who Dorothy was and he said he didn’t know a Dorothy. Jerry liked the ladies and I always suspected that there was a “Dorothy” in there somewhere but he insisted that there wasn’t.

July 1st 1944 and Jerry and Bill McCrae and Hap Kennedy were called on to patrol a line at low level. Jerry was hit by light flak and the Merlin was smoking and seizing up. He belly landed ML135 into a French garden in no man’s land. He got out and ran to a stream where he hid all day in water up to his neck. The story of his escape is amazing how the LeBourgois family hid him until he was repatriated by the advancing army a few months later.

But what happened to “D for Dorothy” is amazing too. She sat in the French garden for days. After the army passed through there was a team who went looking for downed aircraft and salvaged them, loading them on to trucks to be taken to an RAF center where any usable parts were removed and the rest sent back to be smelted down to make new aircraft. The salvage boys didn’t get their hands on “Dorothy”. The French took a few photos of “Dorothy” and dismantled what they could then hooked teams of horses on ML135 and dragged her off into a barn where she would not be seen by the salvage crews.

The years go by. Nobody remembers “Dorothy” except those French

citizens in the area. In the early seventies Jerry Billing, who is still flying Spitfires, takes a trip to France and finds the field where he bellied his Spitfire in. A production company is making a film about him and his exploits. Of course Dorothy is gone. Or is she? The French people remember her as being a source for all kinds of things and pieces of her are still there. A bent and tattered radiator fairing is being used for a pig trough. Aluminum skins from the wings make very good awnings on local homes. A main wheel makes a very good basis for a wheelbarrow. A lady steps forward and returns the mirror from the windscreen to Jerry. Another gives Jerry the starboard flap actuator cover.

Jerry didn’t know what she had been using it for. They also gave him the other main wheel. He brought his pieces of ML135 home and made a little table using the main wheel for the base. A pole goes up through the middle and holds a little wood circular table then extends on up to a Spitfire spade grip with the mirror mounted on top of that. The tire still holds its original air and has little pieces of flack embedded in it. The flap actuator cover hangs on Jerry’s wall.

Jerry has been my friend now for over forty years. I was his crew chief on Cliff Robertson’s Spitfire MK923, 5J-Z which Jerry campaigned at airshows for over twenty two years.

We had many great times together and he told me so much that I could write a book. In 1995 Jerry wrote a book titled “A Knave Among Knights in their Spitfires”. It went into second printing in 2011. One can order a copy of Jerry’s book from his son, Erik at <ebilling@cogeco.ca>.

Jerry fell at home last June and broke his hip. He has been bed ridden ever since. He turned 92 this past April 20th (the same birthday as Hitler’s….Jerry always kidded about that fact). Eduard graciously sent him an example of their new kit. Jerry is thrilled that a Czech company is producing it because he always loved the Czechs.

I will build his model of his ML135, YO-D for Dorothy for him.

Both he and I know that he is on final. His undercart and flaps are down but we can still have a laugh or two about old times and flying and Spitfires.

Bob Swaddling

June, 2013

Copyright © 2013 by Bob Swaddling
Page Created 17 July, 2013
Last Updated 18 July, 2013

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