“Britain was ill-prepared when intelligence revealed that the new Baghdad regime was making overtures to Rome and Berlin.”

By James Dunford Wood

THERE ARE very few WW2 epics still to be uncovered. The short Anglo-Iraq War of May 1941 is one of them. It’s an incredible story of how a handful of RAF cadets and their instructors, in a rag-tag collection of ancient biplanes from a desert flying school, fought overwhelming odds to save Britain’s Middle East empire. Very few people alive today have heard of the episode, and for good reason. No campaign medals were ever awarded, and indeed the whole affair was brushed under the carpet, excised from history. Based on a recently discovered war diary, my new book, The Big Little War, retells this incredible ‘boys own’ adventure, and explores the reasons why.

Some years ago, in the aftermath of the second Gulf War, U.S. Marines came across a desecrated British war cemetery 50 miles to the west of Baghdad in what was then known as Camp Habbaniya. Under the rubble, and the weeds, and the smashed headstones, lay the bones and ashes of over 100 British aircrew and army personnel who had been killed at the RAF station there in May 1941.

If the Coalition forces had been more aware of the history of what they had stumbled on, they might well have referred to the conflict in which they were fighting as the Third Gulf War, because in May 1941 a little known but, as it transpired, very significant struggle broke out between the British and the Iraqis, the latter being supported by Germany. Incredibly, just 39 RAF instructors and the pupil pilots of an RAF training school overwhelmed a besieging force of over 9,000 Iraqi troops. Next, the British went on to capture Baghdad, which was garrisoned by over 20,000 Iraqis, with just 1,500 men.

And yet this episode — known as the Anglo-Iraqi War — was given scant recognition in the official post-war histories. The reason at the time was political. Relying heavily, as the British did, on Arab acquiescence to keep the wheels of the empire turning smoothly, the last thing London wanted to do was to publicize the fact that its military had comprehensively defeated a former Arab ally with a scratch force of trainee pilots in ancient biplanes and a ramshackle relief column transported across the desert from Palestine in commandeered Jerusalem city buses.

In truth, it proved to be an incredible story of British ingenuity and ‘make-do’ in the face of overwhelming odds, and one of the most remarkable campaigns of the Second World War.

Had Iraq been lost, Britain’s power in the Middle East would have been crippled. If Iraq and its access to the Persian oil fields had fallen to the Germans, Syria would not have been far behind, and General Archibald Wavell, Britain’s C-in-C Middle East, could hardly have held out in Egypt.

If Egypt and the Suez Canal had fallen, how could Britain have carried on in its war against the Axis?

The story begins in April 1941, when an Iraqi politician named Rashid Ali staged a coup with German support and forced the Iraqi royal family into exile. Iraq at that time was supposed to be an ally of Britain, providing a crucial waypoint between India and Egypt. Moreover, most of the oil that the Empire ran on — including, crucially, Britain’s Mediterranean fleet and her army in North Africa — was sourced out of Basra in the south. Habbaniya, 50 miles west of Baghdad in the desert, had been chosen by the RAF in the early 1930s as a location to maintain a presence in a region of growing strategic importance. With the outbreak of war, Habbaniya was seen as an ideal location for training pilots, as it was safe and far from the frontlines. Accordingly, it was thinly garrisoned.

As such, Britain was ill-prepared when Rashid Ali seized power that spring and intelligence revealed that the new Baghdad regime was making overtures to Rome and Berlin. Churchill asked Wavell to send an expedition to reinforce the threadbare British military presence in Iraq. Already stretched thin, the commander refused, urging a diplomatic solution instead.

Wavell’s reluctance was understandable; Egypt and the Suez Canal were already under threat. In February, the first elements of Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps had landed in Tripoli, and by the end of March, the British were pulling back towards the borders of Egypt. Meanwhile across the Mediterranean, German forces massing in Romania were threatening Greece. Already in March, Wavell had, at the behest of Churchill, sent 50,000 troops — men which could barely be spared — to aid the Greeks. To add to his pressures, Commonwealth troops were already fighting the Italians in Ethiopia.

On April 6, the situation suddenly and dramatically worsened. That day, two British generals, Philip Neame and Richard O’Connor, were captured by a German patrol in the Western Desert. During the same 24 hours, the Germans launched an invasion of Greece. In little over a week, the Greek army would be in disarray and the British were evacuating Crete. On April 11, Rommel began the siege of Tobruk. Capturing it would give the Desert Fox an important seaport for resupply offering the Axis a realistic chance of reaching Cairo and removing the British from the Middle East entirely.

Into this maelstrom, while fighting desperately on multiple fronts, Wavell was confronted by an escalation in Iraq. On April 30, a 9,000 strong Iraqi army, supported by the country’s British-trained air force, marched on RAF Habbaniya and demanded its surrender. Suddenly, Wavell’s lines of communication with India were at risk, as well as his oil supplies — Rashid Ali had also cut the oil pipeline from Kirkuk to Haifa. All the British had in theatre to resist the Iraqis was an assortment of obsolete biplanes and trainers. The flying school there could muster just 39 pilots — instructors and pupils alike — and a handful of infantry, mostly Assyrian camp guards. It amounted to a very ‘thin red line.’ To make matters worse, rumours were reaching Wavell and the War Cabinet in London that preparations were underway to send Luftwaffe units to reinforce the Iraqis via Vichy French-held Syria.

When Wavell finally woke up to the danger, it was clear that whatever forces he managed to put together to relieve Habbaniya would take at least two weeks to assemble and arrive. It was a 500-mile slog across virgin desert, a vast wasteland that had never before been crossed by a modern army. Britain’s commander in India, General Claude Auchinleck, had been a bit more accommodating, and in mid-April had diverted a seaborne division bound for Singapore to Basra. They had already begun to arrive. However, Basra was just under 400 miles away from Habbaniya, and since the Iraqis had flooded the roads by breaking a series of bunds — embankments — on the banks of the Euphrates, it would also take many weeks for them to get there. Besides that, Baghdad was in the way, with 20,000 Iraqi troops to defend it.

So for the time being, RAF Habbaniya was on its own. The proverbial sitting duck, the camp had not been built with war in mind. It had only a single water tower — no back up — and an airfield outside the main camp perimeter that was overlooked by a plateau now occupied by the Iraqis. This left the aging commander of the base in a quandary. Long retired from active service, the former flying instructor, Air Vice Marshal Harry George Smart, was desperate for reinforcements and orders. He got plenty of advice — from London, from Wavell, from the British ambassador in Baghdad (now besieged by the Iraqis in his embassy), and from Auchinleck in India — but no guidance, and no prospect of imminent help.

He did however have help from an unlikely source: a young and dynamic RAF officer, Squadron Leader Tony Dudgeon. The 25-year-old flier had only just arrived for some rest and recuperation after operations in the western desert. Sensing the danger to the camp following Rashid Ali’s coup, he, along with a group of instructors, took action.

The junior officers set to work preparing the base’s training aircraft for war. The ancient Hawker Audaxes, Airspeed Oxfords and Gloster Gladiators on hand were retrofitted with bomb racks and machine guns.

By the time on May 1 when the Iraqis issued an ultimatum demanding the surrender of the camp, there were four rudimentary combat squadrons totalling 80 aircraft ready for action. However, with only 35 instructors and four semi-qualified cadet pilots (of whom my father, Pilot Officer Colin Dunford Wood was one), they could not all be airborne at once.

That night, Smart assembled his senior officers, including Dudgeon, to announce a momentous decision: They would attack the Iraqis, pre-empively, at 5 a.m. the following morning.

As my father wrote in his diary: “War! I went up at sunrise in an Audax, without a parachute like a fool, and we drop 20lb bombs on the guns.” It was the start of a true Biggles-like adventure.

For five days the school, now formed into what was called the Habbaniya Air Striking Force, relentlessly bombed and strafed the besieging troops. The planes were supported in their actions by Vickers Wellington bombers flying from distant Basra.

In the first day of operations, the Habbaniya force lost a third of its strength, killed or wounded. By the end of the fourth they were almost spent, with hardly enough serviceable aircraft to continue the fight. Of the four cadet pilots, two were dead and of the instructors, over half were out of action. Air Vice Marshal Smart suffered a nervous breakdown and was airlifted out to Basra. They were effectively leaderless, commanded by the senior instructors.

Things seemed bleak. But on the night of May 5, Iraqi troops began to desert their posts, with many heading for Baghdad. Initially they had been told that they were taking part in a training exercise. After five days of relentless bombing, however, they had had enough. En route, the deserters met a column of reinforcements. The two groups were soon entangled. In the resulting confusion, all remaining RAF aircraft were mustered to attack the enemy column. It was carnage. The siege was lifted.

The story was not over, however. As many as 20,000 Iraqi troops still protected Baghdad, and Rashid Ali remained in power. Within days, Luftwaffe Messerschmitt Bf-110s and Heinkel He-IIIs were landing the capital by way of Syria and Mosul to shore up the regime.

To help, Wavell dispatched a relief column raised in Palestine from elements of the Essex Yeomanry, a battery of 25 lb. artillery and units of the Household Cavalry travelling in commandeered buses. Dubbed Habforce, the small rolling army soon found themselves bogged down in sand drifts, an easy target for the Luftwaffe if they had found them. Thankfully they did not. In fact, the Germans were having problems of their own, being unprepared for operating in the desert.

Eventually Habforce arrived, and a plan was drawn up to march on Baghdad before further German reinforcements could be sent.

The last part of the story is equally extraordinary.

The British column, just 1,500 strong, faced 20,000 Iraqis. However, with support by planes from the flying school, they marched on Bagdad and captured the city.

By the end of May, the ‘30 Days War’ was over: Rashid Ali had fled and the Iraqis surrendered. In the end, only skirmishes took place. But it had been, as they say, a “very close run thing.”

How did the British do it? Read my book to find out. You’ll get the whole story, but also learn about the incredible trick that was played on the Iraqis that enabled the British to capture Baghdad with barely a fight.

James Dunford Wood is the author of The Big Little War: A World War II Epic. Based in West London has written history and travel books, as well as edited the war diaries of his father, Colin Dunford Wood. See his website at www.jdwoodbooks.com.