William Earl Johns (5 February 189321 June 1968) was an English First World War pilot, and writer of adventure stories, usually written under the pen name Capt. W. E. Johns: best known for creating the fictional air-adventurer Biggles.
Early life
Johns was born in Bengeo, Hertford, England, the son of Richard Eastman Johns, a fabric tailor, and Elizabeth Johns (née Earl), the daughter of a master butcher. A younger brother, Russell Ernest Johns, was born on 24 October 1895. Johns' early ambition was to be a soldier and he was a crack shot with a rifle. From January 1905, he attended Hertford Grammar School. He also attended evening classes at the local art school.
Johns was not a natural scholar. He included some of his experiences at this school in his book Biggles Goes to School (1951). In the summer of 1907, he was apprenticed to a county municipal surveyor for four years and in 1912 was appointed as a sanitary inspector in Swaffham in Norfolk. Soon afterwards, his father died of tuberculosis at the age of 47. On 6 October 1914, Johns married Maude Penelope Hunt (1882–1961), the daughter of the Rev. John Hunt, vicar of Little Dunham, Norfolk. Their only son, William Earl Carmichael Johns, was born in March 1916.
Military career and the First World War
In 1913, while living in Swaffham, and working as a sanitary inspector, Johns enlisted in the Territorial Army as a trooper in the King's Own Royal Regiment (Norfolk Yeomanry). The regiment was mobilised in August 1914, and was sent overseas in September 1915, embarking on RMS Olympic. The Norfolk Yeomanry fought (as infantry) at Gallipoli until December when they were withdrawn to Egypt. In September 1916, Johns transferred to the Machine Gun Corps. While serving on the Macedonian front in Greece he was hospitalised with malaria. After recovering, he was commissioned into the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) in September 1917 as a temporary second lieutenant and posted back to England for flight training.
Johns undertook his initial flying training at the short-lived airfield at Coley Park in Reading, flying the Farman MF.11 Shorthorn aircraft. He was then posted to No.25 Flying Training School at Thetford in Norfolk, closer to where his wife Maude and son Jack were living.
On 1 April 1918, Johns was appointed flying instructor at Marske Aerodrome in Yorkshire. The aircraft of the time were very unreliable and he wrote off three planes in three days through engine failure – crashing into the sea, then the sand, and then through a fellow officer's back door. Later, he was caught in fog over the Tees, missed Hartlepool and narrowly escaped flying into a cliff. Shooting one's own propeller off with a forward-mounted machine-gun with malfunctioning synchronisation was a fairly common accident, and it happened to Johns twice. The commanding officer at Marske was a Major Champion, known as 'Gimlet', a name used later by Johns for the hero of a series of stories.
During this time Johns's probationary commission was confirmed. He continued to serve as a flying instructor until August 1918, when he transferred to No. 55 Squadron RAF, at the time part of the Independent Air Force, a section of the Royal Air Force that had been formed for the purpose of bombing targets deep inside Germany. Casualties in the Independent Air Force were high and Johns' career flying strategic bombing missions was characteristically short, lasting only six weeks. On 16 September 1918, he was piloting one of six DH.4s on their way to bomb Mannheim when his aircraft was hit by anti-aircraft fire and he was forced to drop out of formation. He jettisoned his single bomb and turned for home, but was attacked by a number of Fokker D.VII fighters. During a lengthy but one-sided battle, Johns' observer and rear-gunner, Second Lieutenant Alfred Edward Amey, was badly wounded and the aircraft shot down. The victory was credited to Georg Weiner, the commander of Jagdstaffel 3. Johns and Amey were taken prisoner by German troops: Johns received a leg wound during the battle and was slightly injured in the crash, but Amey died of his injuries later that day. Johns remained a prisoner of war until after the Armistice of 11 November 1918.
After the war, Johns remained in the Royal Air Force, apparently with the substantive rank of pilot officer. His promotion to the rank of flying officer was gazetted on 23 November 1920. Johns worked in central London as a recruiting officer and rejected T. E. Lawrence (of Arabia) as an RAF recruit for having applied as John Hume Ross and thereby giving a false name, but was later ordered to accept him.