RAF Wick

History is often obscured by the thickening mists of time, and perhaps that is why an important event of WW2, an event that featured a 20 year old newly minted Flying Officer, a Spitfire airplane configured for photo reconnaissance and RAF Wick, has largely been forgotten.

Wick or John o’Groats Airport as it also known, sits just outside the fishing village of Wick in the very far northeast of Scotland. The airport was built at the outbreak of the Second World War and became known as RAF Wick. It was primarily used by Coastal Command flying patrols over the North Sea and making long range meteorological and reconnaissance flights. As the Bazflyers came into land at Wick the old runway system was clearly visible. On a closer ground inspection the original control tower, dwarfed by two nearby enormous old hangers, still contained artefacts from its wartime heritage.

It was from this airfield on 21 May 1941 following a briefing in the Operations Room of the control tower that 20 year old Pilot Officer Michael Suckling took off in his camera equipped Spitfire. His mission was to search the fjords around Bergen for the German battleship ‘Bismarck’.

Three hours later an excited young Suckling landed back at Wick. His camera film was quickly processed. Normally, processed films were sent from Wick by train but given what seemed apparent on the film and there being no other pilot available, Suckling was immediately tasked to fly the prints to London. 

Finding himself running low on fuel and in failing light, Suckling landed his Spitfire near the home of a friend, not far from his own home town of Southwell, Nottinghamshire. Together, they completed the remainder of the journey by car, delivering the prints to headquarters at Northwood, in north-west London, in the early hours of the next morning. There, the prints were examined and it was confirmed that Suckling had indeed photographed the Bismarck while taking on supplies and fuel in preparation for a long sea voyage. 

Suckling’s daring reconnaissance flight and prompt analysis of the prints in London allowed the orchestration of a navel pursuit across the Atlantic that culminated in the sinking of the Bismarck on 27 May 1941. 

It was one of those precious Bazflyer moments, standing in the old wartime RAF Wick control tower looking out over a misty aerodrome and the very grounds of one of the most famous photographic reconnaissance missions of the Second World War. 

Pilot Officer Michael Suckling was decorated with the Distinguished Flying Cross, but sadly exactly two months after delivering the vital reconnaissance images of the Bismarck, he was shot down while on a reconnaissance flight over France and was killed. 

The old RAF Wick control tower and home of Far North Aviation

The huge wartime aircraft hangers

Bazflyer1 with the ‘family’ team at Far North Aviation 

Wick is quite near John o’Groats pictured here on a typically misty day

During WW2 this small coastal harbour would have been a hive of fishing boat activity