Ensor's Endeavour

Mick Ensor, a New Zealander born and bred in rural Canterbury, learned to hunt, shoot and fix engines while still a boy. "I was good at spotting deer," he recalls. "My brothers always said that if I couldn't find a deer, there weren't any about." As a Coastal Command pilot, Mick would prove able to spot U-boats sooner than most other men.
He learned to fly in New Zealand and joined 500 Squadron at Bircham Newton, Norfolk, in 1941. Having survived several dangerous operations in Blenheims over the North Sea and the French coast, Mick first earned fame on his second Hudson operation in January 1942, attacking three German ships at mast height. While avoiding their fire, his starboard wing struck the sea. The airscrew bent right back over the cowling and Mick had to shut the engine down. All his instruments were out of action, the gun turret was useless and a petrol tank was holed. By brilliant airmanship, Mick somehow got the Hudson home, avoiding intense flak over Holland and surviving a fierce snow storm over the North Sea.
During 1942, he hunted U-boats over the Atlantic from Stornoway and then took part in Operation Torch, the Allied invasion of North Africa. Mick destroyed U-259 on 15 November in one of the war's most dramatic attacks. Catching the boat surfaced, he dropped his depth charges perfectly, but they exploded prematurely, causing severe damage to his aircraft. By another feat of superb airmanship, he managed to keep it airborne long enough for everyone to bail out, though two crew members died.
After six months at Coastal Command HQ, sharing his front-line experience with experts conducting the vital Battle of the Atlantic, Mick returned to operations with 224 Squadron in July 1943. Now flying Liberators, Mick overcame the tragedy of attacking a French submarine that surfaced in the wrong place at the wrong time, and earned further fame as a hunter and commander. At age 23, he had the outstanding record of four decorations for gallantry.
After the war, Mick flew 200 missions in the Berlin Airlift, a crucial check to Soviet expansion in Europe, and served for a couple of years with the US Navy, flying patrols off the Russian and Japanese coasts during the Korean War. He flew jets and gliders with equal aplomb before returning home to New Zealand in 1967.
He accepts his successes modestly but does not hide his failures and in addition to an enthralling account of wartime adventures, this biography includes a perceptive analysis of a flying man's struggle to come to terms with life outside the cockpit. "Constant Endeavour" is Coastal Command's grim motto and Mick's own endeavour, in peace and war, has resolutely matched it.


Front cover: A painting by John Chrisp of Mick Ensor sinking the U-259 in the Mediterranean.



by Vincent Orange
Published by Grub Street 1994 1st edition. 190pp illustrated, index, appendix, maps 16x24 mint, including d/j.





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