Thousand bombers coming in on Caen

Image Size: 270mm x 200mm

After growing up in Redcar on the North Yorkshire coast, Joe was studying at Scarborough School of Art in 1939, when, with the outbreak of war he volunteered for the RAF. Throughout the war and especially after the D-day landings, when he was with the RAF Servicing Commandos, Joe recorded his experiences in pen and watercolour sketches which, as he was not an official war artist, he had to keep hidden in the bottom of his kitbag. Although some of his remarkable records were found and confiscated, almost 50 images slipped through the net to form a highly evocative personal record of his experiences.

Joe painted this image as he watched a huge flight of Allied bombers passing overhead on their way to soften up the German defences around Caen in June 1944.