Air Marshall Sir Ivor Broom DSO DFC** AFC 1920-2003

Air Marshal Sir Ivor Broom, 1920-2003 was awarded a DSO and three DFCs during his three tours of duty in some of the most hazardous bomber operations of the Second World War.
In May 1944 Broom joined No 571, a Mosquito XVI squadron of the Light Night Striking Force (LNSF), teaming up with his navigator (and namesake), Flt Lt Tommy Broom.
In their Mosquito - modified to carry a 4,000lb bomb - they were known to the press as "The Flying Brooms", and had the emblem of crossed broomsticks painted on the nose of the aircraft. Although the modified Mosquito was equipped with no guns or rockets, the Brooms made numerous raids over Berlin delivering their "cookies", as the 4,000-pounder was known.
In his reports, Broom barely troubled to mention the heavy flak and night fighters they encountered on these raids. After a particularly bad night, he recorded only "wizard trip" in his logbook; on another occasion, four 500lb bombs dropped accurately on a target in Hanover merited only a laconic "bang on".
Ivor Broom also excelled at mine-laying, and his second DFC followed a neat low-level operation in which he dropped mines in the path of shipping in the Dortmund-Ems canal. It was an advantage in such pinpoint operations that Tommy Broom was an exceptional navigator; he had survived a crash-landing in Holland, then evaded capture and crossed the Pyrenees to Spain, before rejoining his unit six weeks later.
Searchlights were a perpetual problem which, over Berlin, coned the Brooms for as long as a quarter of an hour. After twisting, turning and diving to escape the glare, Ivor Broom once asked his disoriented navigator for a course to base. Tommy Broom replied: "Fly north with a dash of west, while I sort myself out."
During this period the Flying Brooms lobbed a cookie up the mouth of a railway tunnel in Germany with two fighters on their tail, and Ivor Broom received a second Bar to his DFC.
In autumn 1944 he was promoted acting squadron leader in command of a flight in No 128 (another LNSF Mosquito squadron). A few months later he was appointed acting wing commander to lead No 163 Squadron. Tommy Broom, now DFC and Bar, joined him as squadron navigation officer.
The pair then led a series of brilliant offensive operations over Germany and Occupied Europe. When the war in Europe ended on May 8 1945, the Flying Brooms had undertaken 58 missions (including 22 raids on Berlin). Ivor Broom was awarded a DSO, and Tommy a third DFC.
Ivor Gordon Broom was born at Cardiff on June 2 1920, and spent much of his childhood in the Rhondda, where his father was district manager for the Prudential Assurance Company and a Baptist preacher.
Ivor was educated at the Boys' County School, Pontypridd, and grew up in a Christian home in which honesty, tolerance and fair play were encouraged. Temperance was also a virtue, and Broom rarely drank and never smoked - although this never prevented him from enjoying a party.
When he was 17, Broom passed the Civil Service exam and began work with the Inland Revenue. He learned to fly in 1940, while the Battle of Britain was being fought, and the next year was posted to No 114 Squadron; here he flew in Blenheim low-level daylight operations against Channel and North Sea shipping, and targets along the French and Dutch coasts as well as in Germany.
Broom's leadership qualities first surfaced in the early autumn of 1941 when, although still a sergeant, he was detailed to lead six Bristol Blenheim two-engine light bombers to Malta, en route to reinforce Singapore.
As the Blenheims touched down on the beleaguered Mediterranean island, Air Vice Marshal Hugh Pughe Lloyd was quick to grab Broom and his aircraft, in part replacement of his Blenheim losses, leaving the other five Blenheims to proceed to the Far East.
But for this, Broom would have died or become a prisoner-of-war during the fall of Singapore. As it was, Lloyd retained him to fly with No 107 Squadron, whose Blenheims were incurring heavy losses attacking Axis shipping, and targets in North Africa and Italy.
When 107 had lost all its officers, Lloyd told Broom: "Move into the officers' mess. We will sort the paperwork out later." Thus Broom became a pilot officer.
The young, voluble and highly articulate "lad from the Rhondda" (as he was known) rapidly justified Lloyd's confidence, repeatedly pressing home low level attacks on heavily escorted Axis shipping.
On November 17 1941 he bombed and set ablaze a 4,000-ton ship in the Gulf of Sirte, and helped attack a destroyer. But the cost, as usual, was high: while Broom's skill and courage saw him through, two of a force of six Blenheims were lost. He had survived 43 sorties when, in January 1942, he returned home wearing the ribbon of his first DFC.
After his return from Malta, Broom took an instructor's course at the Central Flying School, then spent a year teaching novice Blenheim pilots how to attack at low level.
It was in May 1943 that Broom began his love affair with the de Havilland Mosquito, the speedy twin-engined "wooden wonder" which was to figure so prominently in the remainder of his wartime operational career.
At first Broom remained an instructor, honing the skills of exceptional pilots creamed off by the Australian-born Air Vice-Marshal Don Bennett for his No 8 Pathfinder Group.
One night during this period Broom was landing with a Canadian pupil when the port engine failed at 400 feet.
Broom recalled: "We had full flap down, and on a Mosquito with full flap there is no way you can go round again. I raised the undercarriage, and was going to let the aircraft settle on open countryside when the pupil suddenly said, 'We're going to crash' - and fully opened the throttle of the good engine."
The Mosquito did crash, and the pupil was killed. Broom, who suffered a broken back, was flying again only four months later.
After VE Day, Broom was posted to Ceylon, but was spared further action by the Japanese surrender. He was sent to Singapore, where he dropped rank to squadron leader to command No 28, a Spitfire fighter squadron - although he never flown the type before.
In 1948 he returned home, and dropped rank again in order to attend staff college as a flight lieutenant. When he passed out he resumed as a squadron leader, and learned to fly jets; in April 1953 he formed No 57, the third squadron to be equipped with English Electric Canberra jet bombers.
Having moved on to the RAF Flying College at Manby, in 1955 Broom piloted a specially-modified Canberra from Ottawa to London via the North Pole; this was the return trip on what was then a pioneering route over the North Pole. Broom was then awarded the AFC.
In 1956 Broom was made responsible for the Bomber Command Development Unit at Wittering, where he led intensive trials on Valiants and Canberras of the nascent nuclear deterrent, V-Force.
In 1959 he moved into the Air Secretary's department until 1962, when he was appointed station commander at RAF Bruggen in Germany. Following a year at the Imperial Defence College, two years at the Ministry of Defence, and a spell as commandant of the Central Flying School, Broom took command in 1970 of No 11, the famous fighter Group which had defended London and the South East in 1940.
At this time he was concerned with the presence in the Iceland-Faroes gap of Soviet Bear (Tu 95) reconnaissance aircraft. To ensure that he was fully in control of every situation, he secured a radio to his golf bag; and one Saturday morning, he was summoned from the golf course at Stanmore, Middlesex, as two Soviet aircraft had appeared in the North Sea.
The Bears approached St Andrews (where the Open was in progress), but turned back some 15 miles from the coast - Broom continued his game.
In 1977 he concluded his RAF career as controller of National Air Traffic Services; but he maintained close links with the various veterans' organisations, in which he was a popular figure, noted for his bonhomie. He was president of the Mosquito Aircrew Association from 1993, and a former president of the Pathfinder Association.
Broom also worked energetically for the Royal Air Forces Association, the RAF Benevolent Fund, the Blenheim Society, the Aircrew Association and the Bomber Command Association. He was a member of the Civil Aviation Board (1974-77), and chairman of Farnborough Aerospace Development Corporation from 1985 to 1992.