The night of 16/17 December 1943, afterwards known as Black Thursday, saw the worst RAF bad weather losses of the whole war. A heavy fog caused severe problems for home-coming aircraft and there were multiple fatal crashes, amongst them the aircraft of Ernest Deverill.

Ernest Deverill – “A Knight of the Air” – one of the most tragic losses of 16/17 December 1943 was the death of Ernest Deverill and six of his crew in an accident caused by fog and the shut-down of all the engines on his Lancaster when his petrol ran out. This is a brief biography of the outstanding pilot who won the DFM, the DFC twice, and the Air Force Cross, and who flew on both the Augsburg and Le Creusot daylight raids. The booklet contains many hitherto unpublished photographs, including two taken from his aircraft on the Le Creusot and Milan raids of October 1942.

This booklet, and its accompanying booklet The Mass Funerals at Cambridge, are being sold by the RAF Pathfinders Archive and all profits go towards paying off the outstanding loan for the purchase of the Deverill collection.