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A Downed Pilot Who Ran Away in a Stolen Enemy Plane and Other Historic Escapes

Khalid Elhassan September 13, 2020 28 min

A P=51 making a low level pass on a German airplane. Art Station

30. The Background of a Dramatic Escape and Survival Story

German troops marching through Oslo, on the first day of their invasion of Norway. Wikimedia

In 1929, Richard Thomas Partridge joined the British Royal Navy. After a stint in the China Station serving aboard HMS Hermes, the world’s first purpose-built aircraft carrier, he decided that naval aviation was the thing for him. So he applied for pilot training, made it through the aviation curriculum, and received his wings in 1934. Partridge then spent the next few years serving in naval aviation squadrons aboard aircraft carriers, interspersed with brief stints aboard a cruiser and with the Royal Marines. He returned to the Fleet Air Arm in 1939, a few months before WWII began.

On April 9^th, 1940, months of relative inactivity following Germany’s conquest of Poland, derisively known as the “Phony War” or sitzkrieg, ended when the Germans invaded Norway. The Germans sought to protect their access to Swedish iron ore, upon which their war industry depended, huge quantities of which reached Germany via the Norwegian port of Narvik. Britain and France sought to disrupt that access, so they sent a ground and naval expedition to contest the matter with the Germans. The stage was set for a remarkable escape and survival story.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.