Flavio Da Silva (Primary Source)

Flavio Da Silva was born in Georgetown, British Guiana, and joined the Royal Air Force in 1941. He received his initial training, but was then selected for additional training to become a meteorologist. He completed his courses at the University of Toronto, and was then sent to the Mediterranean theater. While there he worked on RAF stations in Gibraltar, Malta and Algeria.

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We flew out across the Mediterranean towards the Atlantic, mid-Atlantic, basically to get an idea what the weather was like, what was coming towards Italy because that’s where the big trouble was going on.

Transcript

The RAF [Royal Air Force], we went there for training and so on. And I was there for about – oh I would think a year of training. And eventually they came out with applications to train as meteorologists. I went to the university in Toronto and so I agreed to do that. I went to the university, got trained and made it out. And then they posted me overseas. They posted me to the Mediterranean. By then the war was exposed. It was pretty well all over the world. I could – I won’t say I could fly, I was allowed to fly. We flew out across the Mediterranean towards the Atlantic, mid-Atlantic, basically to get an idea what the weather was like, what was coming towards Italy because that’s where the big trouble was going on. I went with that pilot and sometimes I could take pictures. Other times I just wrote what came up. The pictures were essential actually so that we could pass it out to the auditor stations where the air force had the responsibility of supplying what that area was like. We were flying and there was no enemies because we were flying out on the Mediterranean out into the Atlantic. At times, getting back to Europe or one of the countries there, we would get notices or the pilot would receive a notice that we’d have to turn, because if we continue flying that direction, we could be in trouble. And working with other members of the British government and that way everybody was very pleased now everything was over. So I spent about – a few months really in Malta after the war was over. And then once they decided that everybody was going to be leaving and I had to go to England, that was it.