31
On July 14th
Group Captain P.B.B. Ogilvy D.S.O., D.F.C.
, took over command of
the Wing from
Group Captain Lousada
who went as Station Commander to Babdown Farm.
Roch Lousada
had commanded this new Wing for just over a year and for two years
before that he had been in command at Luton; he had given all his time, energy, tact
and experience to the Wing and had built up a sound and efficient unit.
During July our sleep was frequently disturbed at
Northolt
by the flying bombs
and one night, at 0340 hours, a direct hit was scored on the airfield but the bomb
must have been of inferior manufacture because the only damage or casualty was the
aerodrome hare which was killed!
On 23rd July, authority was give for the formation of a Wing Support Unit
which was to supply replacement aircraft and crews. It formed at
Northolt
on
Aug 1st under command of
Peter Cox
and, during the rest of the war,it was based
in England where it trained crews, modified aircraft and carried out some very
valuable work in the development of the technique of Night Photography.
At the end of August, the main party of the Wing embarked for France and,
having landed on 31st Aug,
moved to A-12
,an American Landing Strip about 10 miles
south-west of
Bayeux
, where they were joined by the aircraft and crews on Sept 1st.
A small rear party, under
Sandy Webb
, was left at
Northolt
and was expected to
follow by air two days later but all the Dakotas available were wanted for a pro-
posed airborne operation and they did not join the Wing until Sept 9th, by which
time the rest of the Wing had
moved to
Amiens/Glisy
.
The armies had by now swept ahead and were on their way to
Brussels
and
Antwerp
, cleaning up isolated pockets of resistance on the way, and this had the
effect of leaving 34 Wing very much in the rear with only the sketchiest commun-
-
+
Sorry, your browser does not support inline SVG.