Pegu Airstrip: Afternoon Storm by Thomas Hennell, graphite and watercolour on paper

After Eric Ravilious’ death, Hennell, an esteemed watercolourist, replaced him in an Official War Artist's Admiralty assignment to Iceland. Then from May 1945 he undertook a six-month commission with the Air Ministry in India and Burma (now Myanmar), sending watercolours to London ‘via the hand of a squadron leader’.

Negotiating monsoon weather, in mid-June he made watercolours of Burmese locals repairing an airstrip, days before Rangoon’s (now Yangon) Allied Victory Parade, fearing that ‘weather [such] as this will make it impossible to draw’. Hennell went missing (presumed dead) in Indonesia in November 1945 when captured by nationalists hostile to the former European colonial rule. From the Air Ministry allocation of works from the War Artists' Advisory Committee, 1947. Original accession number: LD5376. On loan from the RAF Air Historical Branch (MOD). Copyright: Crown (expired) / RAF Museum.