16 Acre Plantation, Blaxton

[winston]

HI Colin

Hopefully  this link will have worked and does show you why your William G Craig DFC was granted his award


http://www.awm.gov.au/cms_images/awm192/00305/003050752.pdf



Wendy

[Colin Cruddace]

Deb D, thanks for the link. His records have been requested from the NAA, but I'm too impatient to wait for their arrival.

Wendy, those details are marvelous, many thanks once again.

Now it's a case of trying to find out how he died. I'd imagined something like limping back home from a mission but couldn't make it back to Croft and tried to make an emergency landing. It would be tragic if it turned out to be a routine domestic flight.

Regards,
Colin

[winston]

HI Colin


Also found this but still doesn't say how he died or what caused his death


http://www.awm.gov.au/roh/person.asp?p=148-30832


Wendy

[Colin Cruddace]

Hi Wendy,

Those details put a whole new light on it. It now looks as though he might have received his DFC on completion of his quota of active missions, and was then transferred or appointed to a Flying Instructors School. He may have died while training new pilots.

Thanks,
Colin

[margeyorkshire]

Hi Colin
l checked out those newspapers for you today checked the Doncaster Gazette
and Doncaster Chronicle they are both weekly papers checked from April 12th to May 17th and sorry found nothing.  Also checked the Yorkshire Evening post from the 9th of april to end of April started at the 9th as the 8th was a sunday again nothing.  Also checked out some old maps unable to find 16 Acre Plantation but found 11 Acre Plantation.  Sorry not been able to help could possible have not been reported if it was deemed sensitive information, but did find that on the night of the 8th RAF Bomber Command did a massive raid on Germany of over 900 planes and lost 12 of them.  The newspapers were full of the German defeat and death of Roosevelt.   
Good luck if you think of anything else l can check for you just let me know
Pam

[Colin Cruddace]

Hi Pam,

It's very good of you to have gone to all that trouble, thank you very much. I've been told that the RAF Museum at Hendon might be able to provide some details, but I'll wait for the service records to arrive before I go down that avenue.

Thanks again for your help,
Colin

[winston]

HI Colin


Will you let us know what those records say especially if there is anythign we can check out for you.



Wendy

[Colin Cruddace]

Hi Wendy,
Yes, I'll post the details as soon as I get them.
Regards,
Colin

[dragonq]

This thread is talking about something very similar to what I am doing, so I hope to make suggestions to Colin and also get some help myself with a very odd Yorkshire connection!

Colin, I know this is a RAAF plane, but if it was flying as part of the RAF, you can get the Operations Records Books for the squadron from the National Archives at Kew. What you would need to do is find the squadron, tell them the day you are interested in, and they will quote to copy the pages referring to that raid. If the records are held in Australia I assume that the War Museum in Canberra can point you in the right direction to the records here. There is also a site http://www.lostbombers.co.uk/ which details bomber losses of the Second World War, but if it is a RAAF plane it may not be included.

Now perhaps someone can help me!

I am researching the loss of Stirling Bomber, LK383 of 149 Squadron, Methwold, which was lost without trace on a mission to Brest in France on the night of 6/7 August 1944. My uncle, John Adolphe Prior was the navigator. The reason I am writing to this thread is that I am trying to trace the other crew members. One of them was a boy called Terry Kilcoyne, aged 20, described as being the son of John and Rowena Kilcoyne of, believe it or not, Blaxton.

Can anyone at the Yorkshire end give me more information about Terry or his family, and especially, suggest if there might be any living relatives? A website is being set up about this plane, initially in French, but I am considering an English one. This was the last Stirling bomber to be lost on a bombing operation during World War II, as the plane was in the process of being phased out.

You can see the website here. If you can read French, it does provide quite a lot of additional information:
http://www.absa39-45.asso.fr/Pertes%20Bretagne/Finistere/7%20aout%201944/7_aout_44.htm