‘Having made the journey to Bermuda in January this year with my husband, I feel very lucky to have stepped in my father’s footsteps. — Jane McCall, Valentine’s Day 2014

As the hurricane clouds of war were gathering in Europe, creating a vortex that would consume many parts of that continent and reach out to the shores of Bermuda, the US East Coast and beyond, a young Geoffrey Leonard Emmett won the Junior Wimbledon Singles in 1937, the start of an interest in tennis that would stay with him until his death in 1977.

In the same year, he joined the Civil Service in Britain in the Department of Education, a career he returned to after the end of the Second World War in Europe, being May 7, 1945, the day before his twenty-fifth birthday.

Leaving the civil for military service in early 1941, Geoffrey signed on with the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve to train as a pilot, ultimately in Walrus seaplane, as his last course centred on being catapulted in such a small plane from the deck of HMS Pegasus in February 1942.

The following month, he escaped the cold of Britain and the heat of the continental war for a two-year stint with No 773 Squadron, which had formed up in Bermuda on 3 June 1940 as a Fleet Requirements Unit to provide facilities for ships in the America and West Indies Station.

Emmett eventually flew in six types of aircraft at Bermuda.

The present and enduring significance of Lt (A) GL Emmett RNVR for the Island emanates from the recent visit of his daughter, Jane McCall, who brought to the attention of the National Museum that Geoffrey was not only a pilot of note, but a photographer as well, so that some unidentified images already in our collections might be seen as her father’s camera work.

With her siblings, she has donated a group of his aerial and other photographs of Bermuda to the Museum, and hopefully more may emerge as the family goes through its archives.

Such new associations between the National Museum and descendant donors, who also visit Bermuda, illustrates the value of ‘ancestor tourism’ to the Island, wherein people travel to walk, as Jane stated, ‘in my father’s footsteps’.

Bluntly put, there is money in memories, if only authorities would give the right value to the past in many matters touristic.

But back to balmy Bermuda in March 1942 and days in the sun at the Royal Naval Air Station on Boaz Island for Pilot Geoffrey Emmett and his colleagues in the RNVR and the Fleet Air Arm.

In one of Emmett’s aerial photos, some thirty buildings were extant on Boaz Island in 1942, of which twenty have been demolished since the island came under civilian control in the early 1950s.

Of the FAA buildings, a hanger exists, as do the two slipways for the seaplanes, one facing the Great Sound and the other looking to Mangrove Bay, next to the Boaz Island gas station; many today probably think those latter features were made for the convenience of launching boats, not of the flying species.

The main aircraft used on the Bermuda station was the “Walrus”, built by Vickers-Supermarine.

It was an amphibian biplane that could be launched by a catapult from a warship, or as at Boaz Island, it had wheels by which it could be trundled down a slipway and launched, boat-like, into the sea.

Of the 740 that were built between 1936 and 1944, only four survive.

Three are displayed in museums (FAA Museum Yeovilton, RAF Museum Hendon and RAAF Museum Point Cook) while a fourth “Shagbat” is under restoration at Audley End in Essex.

Being seaplanes, they were often used for search and rescue at sea, as well as anti-submarine work.

As they were quite slow, the Walrus was an ideal platform for aerial photography, as exhibited in the fine examples taken at Bermuda by Pilot Emmett.

In addition to those duties just noted, the Walrus was also used at Bermuda for towing targets for anti-aircraft gunnery practice, and it can be further noted that Lt Emmett and other FAA colleagues survived the fledgling efforts of many a US Navy rating off the south coast of Warwick Parish.

Thanks again to the Emmett descendants, we now have some excellent images of the US Navy’s Anti-Aircraft School that was located on the “Southlands” property in Warwick.

These indicate that at least eight types of guns were being used for practice, some of which had permanent concrete bases, now ‘disappeared’ under, or in the construction of the “Grand Atlantic” apartment blocks.

Some of the guns have been identified from the pictures by members of the Coast Defence Study Group (USA) as follows: 5-inch 38 DP Mark 21, 3-inch 50 DP mark 22, twin Bofors 40 MM AA Mark 1, single 40mm Bofors AA mark 3, 6 to 8-20 mm Oerlikon mark 2 or 4, 40 MM Bofors quad AA mark 2, 1.1 inch quad AA gun mark 2.

(One CDSG researcher commented: “The aircraft being their sighting dummy is a Blackburn ROC, probably relegated to target towing by this stage of the war. The pilot was braver man than I to get that close to student gunners with live ammo!”)

Lieutenant Emmett also flew the land plane at Bermuda known as the Blackburn B-25 Roc, of which 136 were built for the Fleet Air Arm, introduced in 1939 and retired in 1943.

As originally designed they had a rear turret with four .303 Browning machine guns, but at Bermuda and in other places, the turret was removed and a stanchion fitted, as the Rocs were converted to target-towing duties.

Thus Lt Emmett’s log book records a number of instances of flying past the USN AA School at “Southlands”, towing a ‘sleeve’, or a ‘night sleeve’, indicating that such gunnery practice also took place in the hours of darkness; “the tracer fire at night provided a source of entertainment for nearby residents”, if I may be allowed to quote from that seminal work, Bermuda Forts 1612—1957, published seventeen years ago.

After the War, Geoffrey Emmett settled down with Mary, raising a family of three and returning to his tennis and his educational career.

Perhaps he would be pleased to know that the views he recorded over 70 years ago would now provide a major window, a global bird’s eye view, into many aspects of the island’s landscape now departed with the men and aircraft of the Fleet Air Arm Bermuda.

Edward Cecil Harris, MBE, JP, PHD, FSA is Director of the National Museum. Comments may be made to director@nmb.bm or 704-5480.