Although your query has now been fully answered, I thought that you might like to read this bit of additional information.
It's from an account of 206 Squadron RAF Coastal Command which was written on behalf of the squadron at the request of on of the squadron's commanding officers.
Perhaps you might wish to consider writing up your findings and passing them to the vicar of the church for inclusion in the church records.
The U-boat war was daily growing more intense. . . .but it was not getting any easier for the searching crews. . . .For some time past reports had been coming in of strange phenomena seen on the surface of the water --- phenomena that were now known to be caused by the latest secret device employed by the Germans: the "schnorkel" tube, by means of which a U-boat was enabled to use it's diesel motors while remaining almost completely submerged. With the hull of the submarine anything up to twenty-eight feet below the surface of the water, the U-boat was not only able to remain practically invisible to searching aircraft for indefinite, periods, but could also descend out of range of their shallow set depth charges in a few seconds if and when an attack seemed imminent.
September brought a spell of bad weather, and with it another unfortunate accident. Flying Officer Bayard, a "skipper" who, like Flying Officer Thynne, had but recently taken over his crew, hit Lucklaw Hill while trying to get into Leuchars in bad visibility on the evening of the fourteenth of September. Flying Officer Bayard and crew were returning to base after having been diverted to Tain from their "Ops" trip the previous night, and they were carrying an extra pilot who had gone with them for experience, and a civilian Meteorological Officer from Tain who was on his way home on leave. All twelve persons in the aircraft were killed.
Incidentally the phrase "diverted to Tain" was rapidly becoming a by word among the crews of the Squadron. The contrast between Leuchars and Tain could not have been more marked. . . . Leuchars was by now "home" to most of the Squadron; rarely had any other Station been so popular. Anything less like home than Tain was hard to imagine. Leuchars was a peacetime Station, compact and comfortable; Tain was dispersed over several square miles, and had all the attendant lack of conveniences of that type of camp. Leuchars was situated within easy reach of Dundee, St. Andrews and Edinburgh; Tain was in the wilds and "miles from anywhere". But unfortunately Leuchars was particularly prone to bad weather at certain times of the year and in certain conditions; and Tain was so placed that visibility was often just that much better, the cloud base just that much higher. So the crews came to know and dread the familiar message that so often reached them on the way back from the patrol area: - "Leuchars unfit Land at Tain".
On the nineteenth of September the O.C., Wing Commander Leach, returning from a patrol with Flight Lieutenant Jennings and crew in D/206, received a diversion signal when only a short distance from Leuchars. It was feared, however, that there was insufficient fuel remaining to reach the airfield indicated, and six attempts to land at Leuchars were made without success. Only then was a course set for the north of Scotland, and the crew buckled on their parachutes as Wing Commander Leach climbed to six thousand feet, expecting the petrol to give out at any moment. However it lasted just long enough, and D/206 landed safely at Hilltown with ten minutes fuel left in the tanks, having been airborne for fifteen hours twenty-five minutes.
