Mick Ensor
Maechel Anthony "'Mick" Ensor', was a highly decorated officer of the Royal New Zealand Air Force during the Second World War. One of the most decorated New Zealanders to have flown in Coastal Command, he is credited with having sunk two U-boats.
Born at Rakahuri near Rangiora, Ensor joined the RNZAF in 1939 but did not commence his training until the following year. In 1941 he was sent to the United Kingdom to serve with the Royal Air Force. Posted to Coastal Command, he was a pilot with No. 500 Squadron, which operated Lockheed Hudson maritime patrol aircraft across the North Sea. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross in early 1942 for a sortie during which his Hudson was damaged while attacking a shipping convoy. The squadron moved to Cornwall from where it patrolled the Bay of Biscay. Ensor later served in the Mediterranean theatre of operations and destroyed a U-boat on 13 November 1942, for which he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order. After a period of staff duties from January to July 1943, he was posted to No. 224 Squadron, flying the Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy bomber. He eventually rise to the rank of wing commander and was leading the squadron during the final months of the war, sinking a U-boat on 5 May 1945.
Ensor remained commander of No. 224 Squadron in the immediate post-war period and transferred to the RAF in 1947. He was posted to Transport Command and flew extensively with No. 206 Squadron during the Berlin Airlift. After a period of service with the United States Navy on an exchange, he became commander of No. 217 Squadron, overseeing its conversion to the Lockheed P-2 Neptune maritime patrol aircraft. Much of his later service in the RAF was in staff and administrative roles which caused Ensor to become dissatisfied with his career. He was retired from the RAF on medical grounds in 1965. He returned to New Zealand and ran a transport company until his retirement in 1975. He died in Christchurch in 1994, aged 74.
Early life
Maechel Anthony Ensor was born on 5 January 1922 at Rakahuri, a sheep station near Rangiora in Canterbury, New Zealand. He was the youngest of six children of Hugh Ensor, a sheep farmer, and his wife Kathleen. The spelling of Ensor's given name was apparently due to his father's dislike of the Irish and he was known as Mick. In 1930, the Ensor family moved to another sheep station that they owned at the foot of the Southern Alps, leaving Ensor's oldest brother in charge at Rakahuri. He was initially educated by correspondence, supervised by his mother, and combined this with work on the station. From 1935 to the end of 1938 he attended St Andrew's College in Christchurch as a boarder.Ensor had an interest in aviation, and in 1933 had been taken on a short flight in the Southern Cross when Charles Kingsford Smith piloted it on a visit to Christchurch. Still too young to join the Royal New Zealand Air Force when he left school, he took occasional flying lessons at the Canterbury Aero Club and also studied navigation. As his academic career had been average, he also took courses in algebra and trigonometry. In June 1939, he applied for a short service commission in the RNZAF but did not commence his training until the following July.
Second World War
An induction course was held at the Ground Training School at Weraroa, in the North Island of New Zealand, before Ensor proceeded to Taieri, near Dunedin to begin elementary flying training on de Havilland Tiger Moth trainer aircraft. He completed this phase of training rated as "above average" and proceeded to No. 1 Flying Training School at Wigram airbase for further flight instruction on Airspeed Oxfords, a twin-engined trainer aircraft. He gained his wings on 16 January 1941 and was commissioned as a pilot officer the following month. He departed New Zealand on 27 February aboard the ocean liner Awatea, headed for Canada and then the United Kingdom to serve with the Royal Air Force. He arrived at Uxbridge on 2 May and was subsequently posted to Coastal Command, commencing his operational training at Andover on Bristol Blenheim light bombers.Operations over the North Sea
In July 1941, Ensor was posted to No. 500 Squadron, which was based at Bircham Newton as part of No. 16 Group. His new unit was a Royal Auxiliary Air Force squadron operating Blenheims. He did not rate the aircraft, describing them as "not a machine to go to war in". The squadron was mainly engaged in search and rescue missions, but also shipping patrols and strikes, and raids on German airfields. Paired with Bert Paige, an observer, and Horace Roe, a gunner, he flew his first operation on 15 August, searching for rescue dinghies in the North Sea with two other Blenheims. Unbeknown to Ensor, one of the Blenheims was shot down. Further sorties were carried out in September and October, including night attacks on German-occupied France. Towards the end of the year, the squadron re-equipped with the Lockheed Hudson light bomber, a major improvement on the Blenheims.One of his earliest sorties with the Hudson, carried out on the night of 29 January 1942, was a patrol to seek out German shipping near Heligoland, during which Ensor sighted and attacked a convoy of three vessels. One ship received a direct hit from a bomb dropped by Ensor, but during the attack the Hudson came into contact with the sea, causing damage to one of the propellers; at the time, Ensor believed that he had struck a rock. Shutting down the engine with damaged propellers, he made for the squadron's base back in England but inadvertently flew into Holland due to a faulty compass. Discovering his error, he dropped to low level for the return flight across Holland with his navigator, Bertram Paige, calling out approaching obstacles before increasing his height as they crossed the North Sea. Unable to locate an airstrip once they were over England, he made a belly landing in a field in Norfolk. Ensor was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for his efforts while Paige received the Distinguished Flying Medal. The official announcement was made in The London Gazette on 20 February 1942. The published citation read:
In March, No. 500 Squadron shifted north to Stornoway in the Outer Hebrides, where it was tasked with patrolling the regions around the Shetland and Faeroe Islands, through which U-boats would pass as they travelled from their bases in Germany to the Atlantic. Ensor made his first attack on a U-boat on 27 April, the first to be sighted by an aircraft of No. 500 Squadron. All four of the depth charges carried by his Hudson were dropped and Ensor believed the submarine had at least been damaged due to a visible oil patch left after the U-boat submerged although this was not the case. Soon afterwards, he was promoted to flying officer. He made a second attack on a U-boat on 6 July, after one of his Hudson's crew spotted the submarine to the north of Stornoway. Having worked out more suitable tactics for attacking U-boats following his experience of 27 April, this time his approach was superior with depth charges being dropped on either side of the submarine. Despite this, no success was observed. On his fiftieth operational sortie, made on 24 August, he sighted another U-boat from and, dropping to low level, again attacked. He believed a direct hit had been achieved with at least one depth charge, observing a large oil patch after the submarine made a steep dive. However, German records do not show a loss of a U-boat on this date so the oil seen by Ensor may have been a decoy.
At the end of August, having served for five months at Stornoway, No. 500 Squadron went south to St Eval in Cornwall. From here, it flew patrols to the Bay of Biscay. Ensor's efforts during his service at Stornoway and then St Eval was rewarded with a Bar to his DFC; this was announced on 27 October 1942.
Service in the Mediterranean
In early November the squadron was transferred to the Mediterranean and, stationed at Gibraltar and then Tafraoui, was involved in Operation Torch; the Allied invasion of French North Africa. On 13 November Ensor sighted the submarine U-458 about to the north of Algiers. He released two depth charges which forced the U-boat, which had submerged as his Hudson approached, back to the surface. He made further attacks using his machine-guns which killed some of the submarine's crew but had to abandon his efforts when the Hudson ran low on ammunition, allowing the U-boat to escape.Three days later Ensor spotted U-259 on the surface about from Algiers and mounted an attack. Releasing his Hudson's depth charges at only, one struck the U-boat and immediately exploded rather than rolling into the sea and detonating at a pre-determined depth. Although the U-boat was sunk, the resulting shock wave caused significant damage to the Hudson as it passed overhead; Ensor was briefly knocked unconscious but recovered in time to bring the aircraft under control. The Hudson's flying performance was severely compromised as both wing tips were bent at near right angles, the elevator tabs on the tailplane had been lost and the rudders were only just functional. Struggling with the trim of the aircraft, he brought the entire crew into the cockpit area to improve the weight distribution and turned for Algiers. The engines struggled to maintain good flying speed and on reaching Algiers harbour, one gave out. The crew all bailed out, Ensor being the last to exit the aircraft. He and the rear gunner were quickly collected by Royal Navy sloops, but the bomb aimer and navigator were both killed. For this exploit, which was described in the Official History of New Zealanders serving with the RAF as "the most spectacular U–boat attack of the whole war", he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order on 16 February 1943. The rear gunner, Horace Roe, was awarded the DFM. The published citation read: