Hugh Popham was in 880 Squadron with HMS Indomitable and flew hurricanes to begin with. Later in the war Hugh Popham moved to seafires as they replaced hurricanes. They trained with a handful of old RAF Spitfires, delayed briefly on their way to the knacker's yard in order to provide them with experience on type.


Obituary : Hugh Popham
Independent, The (London), Jul 3, 1996 by Peter Popham

Perhaps the only British poet of stature to reflect the experience of young flyers in the Second World War, Hugh Popham went on to write more then a dozen works of fiction and history, culminating in an acclaimed biography of one of the most remarkable admirals in Nelson's Navy.

He was born in Beer, Devon, in 1920, the only child of Sir Henry Bradshaw Popham, a Boer War veteran and colonial administrator whose final posting was as Governor-General of the Windward and Leeward Islands. Popham acquired a lifelong passion for the sea during childhood holidays in Cyprus. After schooling at Repton, he studied Law at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, but broke off in 1940 to join the Fleet Air Arm, where he trained as a pilot and was assigned to one of the first Sea Hurricane squadrons. He spent a year in HMS Indomitable, participating in the Malta convoy of August 1942, possibly the greatest battle ever fought by the Fleet Air Arm.

After breaking his back in an air collision and spending a year in hospital, he returned to first-line flying in a Seafire squadron in HMS Illustrious. He completed his sea service as batsman in escort carriers on Arctic convoys.

Popham devoted much of his spare time during war service to writing poems, and his first collection, Against the Lightning (1944), won the John Lane / Bodley Head Poetry Prize. Two more books of verse followed in quick succession, so that by his mid-twenties he had already published a substantial body of work.