The Story of an American Mercenary pilot

Harold "Whitey" Dahl

Dahl with his I-15 Chato

This piece isn`t a wargaming article it is about the life of one man, I`ve always said history for me is more than weapons and battles it is about the people. I`m sorry if find this dry and un-interesting, sometimes I just can`t help myself and write about stuff I find interesting. I folow a page over on FB which gives "news of the day" reports from the 1930s. well on October 7th there was a snipet headline about a captured US mercenary pilot court martialed and sentenced to death! Nothing more, as the page only gives the headlines, but it did give the pilot`s name. I was hooked and began some digging, here is the results of quite a few hours of delving the internet. 

Harold Edward Dahl (June 29 1909 – February 14 1956) was an American airman and mercenary who fought in the Spanish Civil War for the Republic. He was part of the "American Patrol" in the Garcia Lacalle Squadron. He was known by the nickname Whitey ("Blonde") due to his hair colour. 

Born in Champaign, Illinois, Dahl graduated from Kelly Field flight school on February 28, 1933 and joined the US Army Air Corps as a second lieutenant that same year. His military service ended in 1936 due to gambling problems and subsequent court convictions. He then became a commercial pilot, but new legal problems related to gambling forced him to flee across the border and move to Mexico.

During his time in Mexico he flew airships, charter and commercial flights he also flew flights carrying material and aircraft too for the Spanish Republic down to the port on Veracruz, it should be remembered that Mexico was one of the few countries that supported the Spanish republican government at the time. During one of these jobs Dahl found out that the Republic paid a good salary for mercenary pilots, so he ended up traveling to Spain himself and joining the Republican Aviation under the name of Hernando Diaz Evans, Evans being the maiden name of his mother.

Dahl carried out his training at the Los Alcázares aerodrome, in Murcia. It was there that he met another American mercenary pilot Frank Glasgow Tinker (who would eventually become the highest scoring American pilot serving in Spain with 8 confirmed kills) with whom he would end up establishing a close friendship. Initially they flew the obsolete Breguet XIX bombers, but from on January 23, 1937 he was assigned to a fighter unit, the 1st Chatos Squadron led by Andres Garcia La Calle which used Soviet built Polikarpov I-15 bi-planes. 

On February 18, 1937, during the Battle of Jarama Dahl's Chato was intercepted and shot down by a Fiat CR32, luckily Dahl was able to parachute over Republican territory and return to his unit. 

In May, during the reorganization of the fighter squadrons, Dahl was assigned to a squadron made up of a wide variety of nationalities. Frank Tinker would later say that this made it very difficult for the pilots to coordinate and communicate with each other within the squadron during combat. 

During his time flying in Spain Dahl`s comrades considered him an excellent pilot and he claimed nine victories, but the Republican authorities only confirmed five! And even though there was a $1,000 Dollar “bounty” for each confirmed kill, Dahl`s wife Edith Rogers was only able to get £2,000 based on her husband shooting down an Italian Fiat CR-32 and a German Heinkel-51, there is no mention of the other three confirmed kills!

Frank Tinker`s comments about language difficulties and coordination whilst in combat appears to have in evidence when just a few weeks later, on June 13, Dahl was surprised by enemy BF109 and shot down, this time over enemy territory near Brunete, Dahl survived the forced landing but was taken prisoner. Feldwebel Peter Boddem of 2.J/88 (BF109B) claimed an I-16 in the course of an hour-long air battle on June 13, which also saw Feldwebel Braunschweiger and Oberfeldwebel Fritz Hillman claim an unconfirmed I-16 each. It is possible that one of these claims was Dahl? 

In various interviews after his release, Dahl gave an account of what happened on June 13, he said - whilst on a patrol escorting bombers the squadron encountered a large number of German and Italian fighters, he (Dahl) miss-understood a signal from his flight leader and found himself alone among enemy aircraft! He threw his plane into a steep dive to gain speed and hopefully out run the Messerschmitt, but the angle was too steep and in his attempt to pull out his left upper wing broke apart! He “took to my parachute and made a delayed jump into an olive grove between the lines. Then the Moors came up and I was captured. That`s one time I was damn glad I`m a blond. Otherwise they`d have killed me right then”!  

He was initially court-martialed alongside other captured Soviet pilots and sentenced to death "for rebellion"! From the United States there were diplomatic movements to obtain his release, it has been inferred an American Colonel who had served in the Spanish Foreign Legion alongside Franco during the Rif War personally telegraphed his former comrade in arms asking for mercy. But the more common story one reads is that Dahl`s wife, Edith Rogers, a well-known vaudeville singer and impressive beauty, was said to have written directly to Franco, begging for mercy for her husband. The letter is said to have been accompanied by a suggestive photograph of her in a low-cut white dress! In an interview in Boston on 19 November 1939, Edith said “I wrote three letter to Franco but he only answered the first one – the one in which I enclosed a picture of myself in an evening gown”.   

This story became the basis for the highly successful Hollywood movie by screenwriter Billy Wilder in 1940 Arise My Love (Adelante mi amor) with Claudette Colbert and Ray Milland which received four Oscar nominations and won the award for best story!

Dahl's death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, along with three Russian pilots (Miguel Zaikine, Gregorio Josihianoff and Alejandro Chercasoff), also shot down in Brunete.  The Franco regime then used the decision politically, to silence criticism from the international community as to how brutal the regime was. Dahl was eventually released on February 22, 1940 and allowed to leave Spain.

Dahl & Edith after his release

Movie poster

Shortly after being released, he returned to the United States, where he and Rogers separated. It turned out they were never officially married having been “wed” in a civil ceremony in Mexico which was not legal or binding!

After a few months of rest, was offered another job, this time with the Royal Canadian Air force (RCAF) where along the fifteen other highly experienced US pilots he was to help train Canadian pilots in flying and air-to-air combat. Dahl had over 15,000 officially documented flying hours so was highly valued and highly regarded by his superiors and cadets. He trained these future fighter pilots for Europe at an airfield near Belleville, Ontario. It was here that he met the lady who would become his wife, Eleanor Bowne, the daughter of a wealthy man in Belleville. In 1942 he was attached to RAFTC (Royal Air Force Transport Command) and ended up commanding the RAF transport station at Belem, Brazil, part of the air-bridge across the Atlantic operation. 

Dahl in RCAF uniform

It was there in Brazil his life once again got complicated when he was accused of having stolen equipment and material decommissioned from the RCAF. Whilst most of the charges were eventually dropped, he was found guilty of conduct unbecoming of an officer and discharged from the service in April 1945.

By 1951, Dahl joined the Swissair airline and took up residence in Switzerland. But in 1953 he was accused of stealing a gold bar to finance an extravagant spree of gambling and expensive living with his girlfriend, he was found guilty after a trail, sentenced to two years in prison and was expelled from the country, an event that led to his wife divorcing him!

He returned to Canada, where he became a freight pilot in command of a DC-3. On February 14, 1956 he died in a plane crash caused by bad weather conditions.

Harold Edward Dahl was survived by his three children by his second wife Eleanor: