30. The Background of a Dramatic Escape and Survival Story
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 9th, 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.