Family & cultural backgrounds, and pre-operational experiences
Today is the anniversary of the famous Operation Chastise, the raid on the German dams by Guy Gibson’s 617 Squadron, which took place on the night of 16/17 May 1943. To mark the anniversary, we are publishing an article by Clive Smith, 106 Squadron Researcher: FROM GIBSON’S 106 SQUADRON TO […]
The Edwards crew went missing on the Courtrai operation of 20/21 July 1944. No trace of them was ever found, and they are commemorated on the Runnymede memorial. The bomb aimer on the crew was Jack Skingley. He was married with two children. His daughter, Jackie Maude, recently gave the […]
Surviving photographs of RAF funerals are very rare. Although many were taken officially during the war, so that relatives living abroad could see that their loved ones had been buried with honour, it seems that such photographs were too sad to keep. Norman McIntyre (fourth from left) with two of […]
The lure of flying for people growing up in the 1920s and 1930s is hard to appreciate now when commercial flying is so commonplace. Then, flying was ultra-modern and incredibly glamorous. For aeroplane-mad children, there were a large number of books, comics and magazines, featuring real aviators and fictional ones […]