PILOT Sgt CHARLES HAMEL
NAVIGATOR Sgt JULES ROBERT RENE VILLENEUVE
BOMB AIMER F/Off WILLIAM JOSEPH ALLISON
W/Op/AIR GUNNER Sgt JOSEPH PAUL ERNEST BURKE
AIR GUNNER Sgt ARTHUR GROUIX
AIR GUNNER Sgt GERARD DUSABLON
I agree with mack, the fellow on far right looks like a great matchPrueI'd agree with that
My two step brothers were also in the service. Henry Villeneuve was in the army, and
Jules Villeneuve was in the Air force; he is buried in England
Hi Caroline,
Have been looking at the splendid efforts everyone is making in response to your request. A couple of points have occurred to me however.
1 The young man in the photograph is not wearing any flying badges on his left breast, therefore it is unlikely in the extreme that he was part of the crew.
2 There is no room between the eagle insignia on his shoulder and the seam of the arm for the word "Canada", suggesting that he was RAF rather than RCAF.
3 No rank badges are visible on either arms or shoulders, again suggesting that he was not aircrew, since anyone who was aircrew would hold the rank of sergeant or above at this stage of the war.
The possibilities therefore are that this young man was either a member of ground crew being given a "joy-ride" or he might well have been a member of the recovery crew sent to deal with the crash.
I know this may further complicate your seartch, but I believe them to be points worth considering.
Best wishes in your efforts to establish his identity, and thank you for caring enough.
Sincerely,
Bill Green,
Hon. Chair,
Fenland Branch,
Bomber command Association
note your comments in your Email. The fact that only the recognised crew members were named as casualties of the crash seems to confirm that our friend was not a crew member, but does not rule it out entirelyI'm afraid. The photograph could have been taken soon after his enlistment in the Air Force, before flying training had begun. The crew photographs on the forum appear to be of older chaps than the one you are investigating.
I have, however, studied our friend's picture more closely and am now pretty well convinced that he was RAF rather than RCAF. If you study the large button on his tunic, the RAF eagle is fairly easy to pick out in the centre, but there is no sign at all of the letters R.C.A.F. which I would have expected to see above the eagle.
They were worn by all ranks underneath Warrant Officers, i.e from Aircraftman Second Class (AC2), through AC1, LAC, Corporal, Sergeant, and finally Flight-Sergeant.
The eagles are meant to be worn in pairs, with the both of the eagles facing backward. The unofficial translation of the RAF motto, "We have eyes everywhere", refers to the fact the wearer's own eyes are facing forward in combination with the eyes of the eagles that are facing rearwards
A note about the aircraft used by the training and conversion units.Quite often these aircraft would have seen front line service but because of their age and operational background they would be aircraft that had been overhauled or repaired from previous operational incidents.Their engines may have been repaired and overhauled a number of times.Consequently their performance may have been less than those aircraft in squadron service.However in this particular case the Wellington had been withdrawn from Bomber Command front line service for about a year and had been relegated to training although the RAF were still receiving them as per aircraft company individual contract.It is only by researching an individual aircraft by its RAF unique serial number would the history of an aircraft be revealed.
In this particular case,No 22 OTU lost three aircraft all with engine problems.Being a two engined aircraft,losing one on the Wellington imposed an extra burden on the pilot even if he was experienced.Being an OTU pilot,control of the aircraft would have represented a high work load for him and his navigator especially flying at night over mountainous country.
Overall,a tragic loss of nine RCAF airmen in training accidents which were prominent throughout the flying training courses in the Second World War.
We are also closer to identifying a member of the Allison family here in Montreal. It turns out that William attended McGill University for only one year (1936/37) without graduating. However two of his younger sisters attended the university graduating in 1942 (Beatrice) and 1944 (Joan). Both have passed away but we have now been able to find names of some later generations of William’s siblings (apparently he had six sisters and no brothers). We suspect there might be one sister, Phyllis, still alive.
We are using some volunteers at the university to help us locate a living relative, and will let you know when we have success.
While I’m not an expert on these things, it should be remembered that in the early years of the war, the RCAF didn’t have a large presence in Britain, and many crewmembers served with the RAF until sufficient numbers of aircraft could arrive ffrom the RCAF. There were also shortages of material and uniforms here in Canada, so it could be we were using RAF surplus uniforms for the cadets. A third point is that Canada ran the Commonwealth Air Training plan where we trained pilots in Canada (less risk of being shot down and more petrol available) prior to being sent to Europe. I have seen pictures of Polish, Australian and French crew being trained in Western Canada, some in RAF uniforms.
Another possibility about the origin of the photo found at the crash site is that it might not be of any of the crew, but could have been a photo of a younger brother that one of the crew carried with them. If they were only on a night training mission, they wouldn’t be carrying all of their wordly goods on the plane, so it could be that the photo was of someone else (like a brother) that one of the airmen had inside a wallet.
We hope to use the story of Bill Allison and the work of the various volunteer contributors as an example of why McGill (and other universities) should provide their records on the web. The University of Glasgow has led the way with the release of their WW1 files in 2004. We hope that the photo your grandfather found, and the subsequent interest it generated 60 years later will stand as an example of how valuable these stories are to a larger part of the population
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Update on the crew of MF-509
At the end of October 2005 Caroline posted a request for help in identifying a photo retrieved by her grandfather from a Wellington bomber that crashed on Carreg Goch in November 1944. Since the time a number of developments have taken place, and this is a brief summary of those advances. First, three of the families of the six airmen who lost their lives have been contacted. They are the Burke family in New Brunswick, the Allison family in Quebec and the Hamel family, also in Quebec. All families were very moved by the work of this group in identifying and then contacting family members 61 years after the plane crash. The families were unaware that the crash site still existed and that a memorial had been erected there.
Bill Allison , one of the crewmembers, was one of seven children in his family, and the only boy. The sole remaining sister of Bill, Phyllis, will be traveling to Wales in May 2006 to visit the site and meet some of the people who have contributed. This trip would not have been possible without the work of many people on Rootschat and elsewhere and she would like to thank all of you. If you are interested in more information about this trip, please let us know by a posting. Phyllis has been in contact with both the Burke and Hamel families to share these latest developments.
Unfortunately the identity of the airman in the original photo is still not known. It is likely that it is not any of the crewmembers who were lost in the crash. We now know that prior to the crash the crew’s regular navigator Gaston Caron was replaced by Jules Villeneuve, So although it is Caron pictured in the crew photo, he was not aboard the plane and also survived the war. McGill University in Montreal will be doing a story in their magazine and hopefully this will produce additional information and leads, particularly if the story is picked up by the national newspapers.
Once again I express the thanks of the family of the airmen who now have a chance to have a more complete sense of what happened in November 1944, and also to see the care and compassion of those who worked on supplying the various pieces of the puzzle.
Wes (on behalf of many people)
Hi, all...perhaps you should correct the article-and give a plug to rootschat whilst you're at it
That's a good little article that some more family may also come across!
The memorial has been there since the war but mentioning the hikers and momentos in that last paragraph, although accurate...should maybe have been after the paragraph about the memorial itself....as it sounds a bit as though the site has only just been honoured lately...
Cyber hugs to all...J.J.
I just recieved an email and purely by mistake I opened it (I normally delete all emails from unknown scources),
I don't know who the writer (Bill Grey) is and can't find any mention of him on the thread. However he obviously has some interest in the mystery so her is the short message from him.
"Hi Dennis,
As one who has been heavily involved over the last two years in giving
details, photos etc to both PhyllisBurns (nee Allison) and Wes Cross of
McGill University, I and others have studied the photograph together
with one or two of the crew photographs and have come to a calculated
guess that the unknown airman is the original navigator of MF 509 - viz
Gaston Carron
There is a photograph of Bill Allison and a sergeant studying a map near
the front of a Wellington, and in spite of the flying helmet, we are
convinced the sergeant is Gaston Carron.
The point is - where is Gaston Carron now, or whatever happened to him ?
I really wonder??
Regards,
--
Bill Grey"
Denn
Has contact been made with the Villeneuve family? A friend of ours has just been named as Jacques new race engineer for 2008.
Karen