The future Prime Minister of Rhodesia Ian Smith served in the Royal Air Force (RAF) during the Second World War, interrupting his studies at Rhodes University in South Africa to join up in 1941. Following a year's pilot instruction in Southern Rhodesia under the Empire Air Training Scheme, he was posted to No. 237 (Rhodesia) Squadron, then stationed in the Middle East, in late 1942. Smith received six weeks' operational training in the Levant, then entered active service as a pilot officer in Iran and Iraq. No. 237 Squadron, which had operated in the Western Desert from 1941 to early 1942, returned to that front in March 1943. Smith flew in the Western Desert until October that year, when a crash during a night takeoff resulted in serious injuries, including facial disfigurements and a broken jaw. Following reconstructive plastic surgery to his face, other operations and five months' convalescence, Smith rejoined No. 237 Squadron in Corsica in May 1944. While there, he attained his highest rank, flight lieutenant.

In late June 1944, during a strafing attack on a railway yard in the Po Valley in northern Italy, Smith was shot down by anti-aircraft fire. Parachuting from his aircraft, he landed without serious injury in the Ligurian Alps, in an area that was behind German lines, but largely under the control of anti-German Italian partisans. Smith spent three months working with the local resistance movement before trekking westwards, across the Maritime Alps, with three other Allied personnel, hoping to join up with the Allied forces that had just invaded southern France. After 23 days' hiking, he and his companions were recovered by American troops and repatriated.

Smith was briefly stationed in Britain before he was posted to No. 130 (Punjab) Squadron in western Germany in April 1945. He flew combat missions there until Germany surrendered in May. He remained with No. 130 Squadron for the rest of his service, and returned home at the end of 1945. After completing his studies at Rhodes, he was elected to the Legislative Assembly for his birthplace, Selukwe, in 1948. He became Prime Minister in 1964, during his country's dispute with Britain regarding the terms for independence; Smith was influenced as a politician by his wartime experiences, and Rhodesia's military record on behalf of Britain became central to his sense of betrayal by post-war British governments. This partly motivated his administration's Unilateral Declaration of Independence in 1965. His status as a Second World War RAF veteran helped him win support, both domestically and internationally.

Background Ian Smith was born in 1919, the son of British settlers in Selukwe, Southern Rhodesia. He attended Chaplin School in Gwelo, where he was head prefect, recipient of the Victor Ludorum in athletics, captain of the school teams in cricket, rugby union and tennis, and successful academically. After graduating in 1937, he attended Rhodes University College in Grahamstown, South Africa, which was often attended by Rhodesian students, partly because Rhodesia then had no university of its own. Enrolling at the start of 1938, Smith read for a Bachelor of Commerce degree. He was about halfway through his course when the Second World War broke out in September 1939.

Enlisting and training in Rhodesia

Smith was fascinated by the idea of being a fighter pilot, and particularly excited by the prospect of flying a Spitfire. He wanted to leave Rhodes immediately to join the Southern Rhodesian Air Force, but did not because military recruiters in the colony had been told not to accept university students until after they graduated. As in the First World War, white Rhodesians in general were very keen to enlist; because it was feared that the absence of these men might adversely affect the strategically important mines, manpower controls were introduced to keep certain whites out of the military and in their civilian occupations. One of Southern Rhodesia's main contributions to the Allied war effort proved to be its participation, from 1940, in the Empire Air Training Scheme. The Southern Rhodesian Air Force was absorbed into the British Royal Air Force (RAF) in April 1940, becoming No. 237 (Rhodesia) Squadron RAF. Two more RAF squadrons, No. 44 and No. 266, were subsequently also designated "Rhodesian" formations.

Remaining at Rhodes during the 1940 academic year, Smith secretly made plans to leave for military service in spite of his instructions to finish studying. In June 1940, during the mid-year break from studies, he quietly travelled to the Southern Rhodesian capital, Salisbury, to tell the colony's director of manpower, William Addison, that he wanted to join the air force; to avoid being barred from enlistment, Smith did not mention his university attendance, and gave his Selukwe address. During his Christmas vacation at the end of 1940, Smith went to Salisbury again, and was successful in a second interview with an air force official and a physical examination. Early in 1941, having received his pilot course call-up papers, Smith underwent a final interview, during which it emerged that he was a university student; the interviewer briefly demurred, but accepted Smith when he insisted that he wanted to sign up.

In September 1941 Smith formally enlisted in the Royal Air Force and received service number 80463. He began his instruction with Initial Training Wing in Bulawayo, and after six weeks transferred to Elementary Flying Training School at Guinea Fowl, just outside Gwelo. The majority of the men he trained alongside were Australians, and many others were British. Smith was glad to find himself in a course that would ultimately lead to flying fighters as opposed to bombers, since at Guinea Fowl he learned to pilot Tiger Moths, then Harvards. He was also pleased to have been posted only a half-hour car journey from Selukwe. Late in the course he was picked out to undergo instruction as an officer cadet, which meant he was transferred to Thornhill, another Gwelo airbase. He passed out in September 1942 with the rank of pilot officer; his training in Southern Rhodesia had taken a year in all.

Service Middle East and North Africa

Smith hoped to be posted to Britain at the end of his training, and was initially told that this was going to happen, but he was instead sent to the Middle East. He was despatched to Idku, a small RAF base near Cairo, in late 1942, from where he was posted to an operational training unit based at Baalbek in Lebanon. He spent six weeks there, flying over much of the Levant in a Hawker Hurricane fighter, before being posted to No. 237 (Rhodesia) Squadron to begin active service, again piloting Hurricanes. The squadron was stationed near the Iranian capital of Tehran when Smith joined it, but it almost immediately transferred to Kirkuk in Iraq, to help guard the oil wells and pipelines there. In March 1943, it was again committed to the Western Desert campaign in North Africa, having previously served there during 1941–1942, and Smith served on this front as a Hurricane pilot. He was promoted to flying officer on 25 March 1943.

On 4 October 1943, Smith took off from Idku at dawn in a Hurricane Mk IIC to escort a shipping convoy. Light was extremely poor, and Smith's throttle malfunctioned; he failed to take off quickly enough to clear a blast wall at the end of the runway. The undercarriage of the aircraft scraped against some sandbags on the wall, causing Smith to lose control of the plane and crash. The shoulder straps on his harness, built to withstand stress of up to , snapped, and his face was smashed against the Hurricane's gyrosight. Smith suffered serious facial injuries, and broke his jaw, a leg and a shoulder. Doctors thought at first that his back had also been broken, but it had only been buckled.

A team of doctors and surgeons at the Fifteenth Scottish Hospital in Cairo worked extensively on Smith, putting his jaw back together with a complicated assembly of bandage, plaster, nuts, bolts and wire, and rebuilt his face through skin grafts and other reconstructive surgery. In March 1944, after about five months' convalescence, he was passed fit for flying. He turned down the offer of a posting home to Southern Rhodesia as an instructor and, after a refresher course in Egypt, travelled to Corsica to rejoin No. 237 Squadron, which was by now flying Spitfire Mk IXs.

Italy

Smith joined No. 237 Squadron in Corsica on 10 May 1944, and resumed operational flying two days later. He was promoted in the field to flight lieutenant. The unit was attached to an American bomber group, and assigned to cover it during attacks on northern Italian cities. The fighters also embarked on strafing raids in the Po Valley against railway traffic and heavy vehicles. Smith flew 10 sorties and on the last of these, on 22 June, led a strafing raid against a large railway yard when his aircraft was hit by flak on a second pass. He warned other pilots not to attempt a second pass on the railway yard, and turned towards the coast, hoping to ditch in the sea. Smith's wingman, Alan Douglas, told him by radio that black smoke was coming from the aircraft, then that the engine was ablaze. Smith bailed out. He had never parachuted before. He turned his Spitfire upside down, thrust the stick forward, released the cockpit's canopy, fell out of the plane and landed without serious injuries on the side of a mountain.

According to his own account, he initially hid in a large bush, but decided this was too obvious, and so moved to a smaller one. A German patrol arrived, examined the original bush, and attacked it with bursts of automatic gunfire before leaving. "Somebody was keeping an eye on me when I thought I'd better get out of that bush ..." he later told Phillippa Berlyn. The area in which he had landed was predominantly anti-German, and largely under the control of pro-Allied Italian partisans; one of these saw Smith's descent and retrieved his parachute to stop the Germans from finding it. Smith hid for a while longer before emerging to greet a boy of about 12. The boy, Leo, knew no English; using sign language, he told Smith to sit and wait, and shortly returned with his elder brother, Lorenzo. Lorenzo proposed that Smith come to their home to eat, and Smith accepted. The boys' parents, peasant farmers named Zunino, took him in, but decided it was too risky to keep him at the house so soon after the crash, and hid him in a cave on the mountain. The next day, the Germans came to the Zuninos' house, looking for Smith. After about a week, the danger had subsided, and the Zuninos gave Smith a room in the house.