Lyons, Emanuel Barnett (1918-1992), Battle of Britain pilot and former undergraduate at Magdalene College, Cambridge

Shortly before the outbreak of war in 1939, while he was still an undergraduate at Magdalene, Emanuel Barnett Lyons joined the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve as a trainee pilot. He was promptly called up in September 1939 and, after a year's training, he was posted to RAF Turnhouse (now Edinburgh Airport). His log books recorded a series of "dog-fights" against German intruders, encounters which accorded "Butcher" Lyons the status of a Battle of Britain pilot. (The nickname is unexplained.) In July 1941, he moved to Manston, the front-line fighter station in Kent, where he took part in missions providing cover for Bomber Command raids on targets in northern France. From there, he was transferred to North Africa, where he noted of one mission that three fellow pilots "did not return". In February 1945, he took charge of a squadron based in Holland: since he was still technically a member of the RAFVR, he held the nominal rank of Acting Squadron Leader. Their Hawker Tempest single-engine fighters were effective in low-level attacks, particularly the "rat scramble", the ambushing of the Luftwaffe's new Messerschmitt 262 fighter jet as it was coming in to land and unable to escape by accelerating. In response, the Germans protected their airfields by creating "flak lanes" of intensive ground fire that inflicted heavy casualties on the Tempests. On 11 April, within four weeks of the end of the war, Lyons led an attack on an airfield at Fassberg, ninety kilometres south of Hamburg and deep inside Germany. Flak shattered the canopy of his cockpit, and the debris caused a head wound. Despite his injury, he was able to fly his damaged plane two hundred miles back to base, an achievement for which he received the Distinguished Flying Cross: the award was actually gazetted on VE Day. There were Dutch pilots attached to his squadron and he was later also awarded the Netherlands Flying Cross in recognition of his skill in leading them back to safety. In 1947-8, he served as Treasurer of the Jewish Ex-Servicemen's Association.

Also see: https://www.bbm.org.uk/airmen/Lyons.htm

Ged Martin