 Battle of Britain.Olive's file tells us many details we wouldn't usually find in other official records, such as his success as an athlete, breaking the RAF javelin record in 1939. Transcripts of radio interviews share his experiences as a fighter pilot in the Battle of Britain, and recount the respect he had for his fellow pilots, British, Dominion, and Polish alike. Olive won the Distinguished Flying Cross in September 1940. At the age of just 24, he became the first Commanding Officer of 456 Squadron, the RAAF’s only night fighter squadron in the Second World War. He rose to the rank of Acting Wing Commander, and rejoined the RAAF in 1943.
Olive used to tell his pilots the tale of a particularly memorable incident. Once when he bailed out, his parachute nearly failed to open. When he landed in a paddock, he was confronted by members of the land army and home guard, and had to convince them he was not German. That accomplished, he thought he'd made it, but the ambulance taking him back to the aerodrome overturned and, as the file notes:
"I scrambled out with a few more bruises, and was then picked up by a fire engine dashing to the spot where my Spitfire was burning itself out.
"The fire engine, too, ended up a minute later in the ditch.
"After that, I decided to walk."
And that is why the wing commander always tells his pilots that they are safer in the air.
Olive's biography, The Devil at 6 O'Clock: An Australian Ace in the Battle of Britain, was published in 2001. His biographical file and over 4,600 others can be viewed in the Memorial’s Research Centre.
References and Further Reading
- 'Olive, Charles Gordon Chaloner 39469', Australian War Memorial, AWM65 4018.
- 277457 Wing Commander Charles Gordon Chaloner Olive, DFC.
- John Herington, Air War Against Germany and Italy, 1939-1943, Australia in the War of 1939-1945, Series 3 (Air), vol. III (Canberra: Australian War Memorial, 1954).
- Dennis Newton, A Few of 'The Few': Australians and the Battle of Britain (Canberra: Australian War Memorial, 1990).
- Gordon Olive and Dennis Newton, The Devil at 6 O'Clock: An Australian Ace in the Battle of Britain (Loftus: Australian Military History Publications, 2001).
- Series note, AWM65.
- Alan Stephens, The Royal Australian Air Force, The Australian Centenary History of Defence, vol. II (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2001).