Vincent Doherty, an idealist and an adventurer

Vincent Joseph Doherty O’Loughlin (1909-1967) left Spain definitively at the end of March or the beginning of April 1937, seven months after enlisting as a pilot at the Republican airfield of Getafe (Madrid). He was 27 years old. Doherty was among the first group of forty or fifty British brigades who arrived in Spain of their own accord, not waiting for expeditions organized by communist organizations in the United Kingdom to fight fascism between July and September 1936. This could mean that Doherty was a capricious person, an idealist, an adventurer… or a confused mix of the three.

Why did he go to Spain?
There is not enough information to know what he thought or why he became a volunteer, neither are there any letters or documents to shed light on unknown factors such as his ideology or the reasons which led him to fight on the side of the Spanish Republic. Neither is it known whether he was a member of a British political party or union. His biography, however, reveals that from a very young age, he had a deep spirit of adventure. At the Getafe airfield he enlisted in the squadrons of the Breguet, Nieuport, Fury, Loire 46 and Dewotine D371 airplanes under the command of the legendary Republican pilot Andrés Garcia Lacalle. He fought until the 25 or 26 September when, after shooting down two Nazi or Italian fighter planes, he was wounded while piloting a Dewotine D371 and was forced to make an emergency landing close to the Cerro de los Ángeles, two kilometers from the Getafe Republican airfield. He must have had a great admiration for the squadron commander, adding Lacalle to the name of one of his two sons.

Siege of the Alcazar
A week before this incident, he had gone to Toledo and participated in the siege of the Alcazar. It is very probable that Doherty coincided with the French writer André Malraux, who also participated during these months in the Spanish civil war, organizing a squadron of Republican fighters in Madrid. Interestingly enough both travelled to their respective countries during the war to try and recruit pilots and buy airplanes for the Republic. As Doherty mentioned on a few occasions, he also had the opportunity of meeting another writer, the North American Ernest Hemingway who arrived in Madrid in March 1937.

British spy?
Another hypothesis is that Vincent Doherty was also a spy of His Majesty. The summary of an interview between him and Lieutenant Colonel Medhurst of the Intelligence Service of the Royal Air Force on 2 November 1936 has recently been uncovered. During the interview, Doherty updates Medhurt on the specific techniques, the combat strategies and the characteristics of the Nazi and Italian airplanes which Hitler and Mussolini had provided Franco, and against which Doherty had had to fight. This information was very relevant for the British, given the superiority of the German military aviation and the rise of Nazism and fascism in Europe. Whether or not Doherty was a British spy will remain unknown. His personality, however, contained all the essential ingredients to successfully carry out a mission of this type. This could explain why he didn’t tell his wife about his trip to Spain.

More about the photographs
Research has confirmed that the fifty photographs correspond to mid-September 1936 during the siege of the Alcazar of Toledo. Others could be from 18th September, an important date in this chapter of the history of the civil war. The photographs, of excellent quality, were taken by a good North American or British professional. This can be deduced by descriptive texts in English and the author’s references on the back of the photographs. The initials S&G and ETF could correspond with the name of the still unidentified photographer who took them. Most of the photographs are of irregular soldiers, soldiers and assault guards in the environs of the Alcazar, the Zocodover Plaza and the Calle de las Armas (the Street of Arms), places identified on site by the local historian Rafael del Cerro Malagón.

The most pressing question is why Vincent Doherty took the photographs from Spain in 1937. The most obvious response is that he himself appears in some of the photographs and may have proposed to the author, an English speaker like himself, that he take them. It’s interesting to note that the person identified as Vincent Doherty always went unarmed, whilst those around him carried rifles, pistols, bombs and carabines. Among the many hypotheses, the most convincing is one of following: that he went to Toledo from Getafe either to witness the spectacle of the siege, in which he did not participate, as if he were a correspondent or a type of tourist in a war scene; or to obtain strategic ground information relevant to an eventual aerial attack on the Alcazar.

Conclusion: Robert Capa, Henry Buckley, Vincent Doherty
The photographs of Vincent Doherty, taken in Toledo during mid-September 1936, have been added to those taken by Robert Capa in the Penedes on the 15th January 1939 and those of the British press correspondent Henry Buckley taken in Catalonia between 1936 and 1939. Thy are all now classified in the Alt Penedes regional archive.

Sometimes coincidences happen which really seem to be the work of the gods (or the goddesses, to avoid offence). This is just an example, because Capa, Buckley and Doherty were in Toledo on 18 September 1936 during the siege of the Alcazar. Capa and Buckley also visited the Penedes on various occasions, while Vincent Doherty never did.

However, thanks to his granddaughter Anya, these three surnames will be linked forever to the specific history of the Penedes, to Toledo and the Spanish Civil War.