That one morning of October 28, 1942, as twelve Hurricane fighter jets took off with a deafening noise in the middle of the Libyan desert, no one could imagine that a handful of intrepid Greek airmen – most of them fugitives from occupied Greece – would carry out one of the most daring air raids in North Africa during the Second World War, which even they themselves Englishmen they considered pure madness.

“We want to get our blood back,” he said in his characteristic tricolor accent the interpreter Ioannis Kellas, a thirty-four-year-old man who had fought the Italians in the air over the Albanian mountains, Epirus and Central Greece during the Greco-Italian War, but was now in command of the 335th Pursuit Squadron which had been equipped and operated in the desert under British supervision.

“Kellas asked the wing to which the Squadron belonged to plan an attack against the Italian headquarters on the 28th of the month for reasons of prestige, because they declared war on us on October 28,” he told the Athenian-Macedonian Agency in 2020 the late Wing Commander Georgios Pleioniswho in October 1942, had first come to 335 as a young second lieutenant.

The Italian Headquarters some twenty miles west of the El Alamein front line was well fortified with anti-aircraft, and ready to meet any attack, as the Second Battle of El Alamein was in progress.

“They told him (the British) that this mission you are asking to be carried out is both dangerous and pointless,” said Wing Commander Pleionis and added:

But Kellas had taken it personally and told them “if you don’t allow me to go organized, I will take my Fate and go alone”. We were operators in Moira. If the major told us all to go, we would. The British saw that Kellas wasn’t paying attention and told him well, if you insist, the 274 Squadron of New Zealanders (also South Africans) will come with you. They even destroyed the staff plan. Twelve planes for them, twelve for the Greeks, one up and the other down. We would cover the 274th from the enemy planes and since the attack by the New Zealanders would take place at the headquarters, then the plan called for them to gather and climb over the Greek Squadron and make this attack as well. The insult was done by 274 first and they got up and left. They did not stay to cover Moira (Greek) from above. Fortunately no German planes showed up. Kellas had appointed Lieutenant Panagopoulos, who knew English, as leader. They took positions, the planes circled and attacked and left. But the surprise went awry because the Italians had woken up due to 274 and were hitting the Greek planes upside down. There wasn’t a single plane out of the dozen that wasn’t hit,” concluded the centenarian wingman.

Ensign Ioannis Kellas, a modest hero

Diving steeply towards their target, the pilots could see over the desert a golden layer from the flashes of the Italian anti-aircraft guns, through which the twelve planes passed, while the then second-in-command Ilias Kartalamakis, who led the second quartet had emphasized that his own squadron’s mission was to attack the anti-aircraft immediately after the leader. The other four, the squadron of sub-squadron Vucinas, was intended to cover their rear.

Pursuits get to within a few meters of the ground, machine-gunning anything Italian in sight, from trucks and tents to anti-aircraft emplacements and gas tanks, thanks to the mastery of Ensign Kella, the “first desert eagle”.

Kellas was a real lad, according to Wing Commander Pleionis. “He was not of the school, nor of Evelpidon, he came from some non-commissioned officer school, but he was a Levantist,” said the veteran aviator.

As thousands of ballistic missiles sweep the desert sky on the morning of October 28, 1942, wanting to catch in a deadly web all twelve “Hurricanes”, they take “their blood back”, for the suffering, deprivation, and death that the conquerors sowed in the enslaved homeland.

According to an official RAF report seven trucks were destroyed, as well as a “Ju-87”, along with tents and machine gun nests, while Lt. Gen. Xydis made an emergency landing on friendly ground after leaking glycol due to the shells he received. Second Lieutenant Kartalamakis was initially declared missing, but later it was learned that he had been injured after an abnormal landing in the Australian sector, with his plane completely destroyed.

As Wing Commander Pleionis has pointed out, “when the planes turned around, another had a cut wing, while the bullets had passed by the seat of another. Everyone was looking and saying how lucky I was to escape. The only plane that didn’t have a single bullet was Lefteris Hatziioannou’s.”

When Hatziioannou searched the plane and found no bullet, he turned around and said “hey, everyone has a bullet…they’ll think I didn’t go”.

The next day the Allied radios were talking about the success of the Greeks and especially on the BBC the voice of the British shipping minister was heard congratulating the Greek pilots, while the Italian radio indulged in its well-known lies saying “insolent Greeks dared to attack Italian targets, but paid for their audacity with the loss of eleven aircraft (!)”.

The Second Battle of El Alamein (October 23 – November 5, 1942) was one of the most iconic battles of World War II. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had declared that it was “the end of the beginning” for the Afrika Korps when Allied forces broke through the German lines, forcing Rommel’s forces into retreat. The 1st Greek Brigade also participated in the operations.

*In the photo you can see pilots of the 335th Pursuit Squadron during the attack on the Italian Headquarters in El Alamein, in October 1942. In the center with the two-wheeler is Ioannis Kellas, the “first eagle of the desert”. (personal file of Petararch Georgios Pleionis)