René Mouchotte

Commandant René Mouchotte, DFC (21 August 1914 – 27 August 1943) was a French pilot who died during the Second World War. A pilot in the French Air Force, Mouchotte escaped from Vichy French–controlled Oran to join the Free French. Serving with RAF Fighter Command, he rose to command a fighter squadron before being shot down and killed on 27 August 1943.

French Air Force

Born into a wealthy family on 21 August 1914 in Paris, Mouchotte enlisted in the air force in October 1935 at Istres, where he was promoted to corporal (April 1936), master corporal (March 1937) and sergeant (April 1937). He he qualified as a pilot in February 1937. In January 1939, he transferred to the reserve and resumed civilian life. Recalled in September 1939, he was posted to training establishments at Salon-de-Provence and Avord as a flying instructor. Despite several requests to join a fighter squadron, he was transferred to Oran in May 1940 for a conversion course to twin-engined aircraft.

After the Armistice, the pilots on the base were ordered not to escape to join the Free French and their aircraft were placed under armed guard. In defiance of these orders, Mouchotte and five others (including Henry Lafont) commandeered a twin-engined Caudron Goéland aircraft, only to find that the controls for the variable-pitch propellers had been disabled, making the take-off hazardous. Nevertheless, they successfully landed at Gibraltar, from where they embarked aboard the Free French armed trawler Président Houduce for passage to England.

In Britain

After arriving in Britain, Mouchotte trained at RAF Old Sarum and RAF Sutton Bridge on Hawker Hurricanes, before being posted to No. 615 Squadron, based at RAF Northolt in northwest London. He carried out his first operational sortie on 11 October 1940. The squadron moved to RAF Kenley in December 1940. His first victory came in August, when he shot down a Junkers 88 over the Irish Sea. In November 1941, Mouchotte transferred to RAF Turnhouse, where the Free French 340 Squadron was training with Spitfires; he became a flight commander in February 1942 and subsequently the commander of 65 Squadron, the first RAF squadron to be commanded by a non-Commonwealth officer. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross on 1 September 1942.

Mouchotte assumed his final command in January 1943. This was the Free French 341 Squadron (Groupe de Chasse n° 3/2 "Alsace"), forming part of the Biggin Hill Wing. On 15 May 1943, Squadron Leader Jack Charles (611 squadron) and Mouchotte both destroyed a Fw 190 of I./JG 2, claiming Biggin Hill Wing's 999th and 1,000th kill, respectively.

On 27 August 1944, Mouchotte was shot down in an engagement with Fw 190s of JG 2 during Ramrod S.8, escorting Flying Fortresses on the first daylight raid against Blockhaus d'Éperlecques, in the Pas de Calais. His body washed ashore on 3 September and was buried in Middelkerke, Belgium. He was exhumed in 1949 for repatriation to France, where he was buried on 3 November in the family tomb at Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris. His funeral had been preceded by a memorial service with full military honours, conducted at Les Invalides.

He had accumulated some 1,748 flying hours, including 408 operational hours, flying 382 war sorties. He had claimed two (and one shared) aircraft destroyed, one 'probable', and one damaged.

Legacy

After the war, Andre Dezarrois compiled Mouchotte's diaries and flying logs and published them in France in 1949 as "Les carnets de René Mouchotte, 1940-1943" (and later as "Mes carnets: juin 1940-août 1943"). In 1956, the book was translated into English by Philip John Stead under the title The Mouchotte Diaries; by the following year eight editions had been printed. The book was reissued in France in 2000 and in Britain in 2003.

He is commemorated in Paris by the street Rue du Commandant Rene Mouchotte, in the 14th Arrondissement, and a nearby footbridge over the River Seine. There are two plaques in his memory at Eperlecques. A French Air Force base at Cambrai-Épinoy was named Base Aérienne 103 "Commandant René Mouchotte". After its closure, the French Air Force Training Base at Cazaux was named after him in September 2012. On 13 June 2013, a vitrine by the Yorkshire Air Museum was unveiled at the Lycée Français Charles de Gaulle, London in memory of Mouchotte and the Forces Aériennes Françaises Libres. The RAF headquarters in Gibraltar was renamed the Mouchotte Building on the weekend of the Battle of Britain Commemorations on 14–15 September 2013.

Mouchotte was the subject of a BBC One television programme by Jan Leeming, shown in Britain on Inside Out on 28 January 2013 and another version filmed at Elvington in February 2013. His British campaign medals were not presented to his family after the war. They were obtained by the Yorkshire Air Museum & Allied Air Forces Memorial, who presented them to his sister, along with recently-discovered footage of her brother taken in 1943, shortly before she died in June 2012. They were presented to the family alongside the medals of Mouchotte's friend Henry Lafont, at the British Ambassador's Residence in Paris on 13 July 2012.