39
members of the Wing had their feet well under some table or other by the end of
October.
On Sep 30th, a tragic accident occurred when a
Anson
, piloted by
Peter Cox
, and having
Colin Chapman
(who had taken over command of 140
from
Richard Bowen
on Sep 14th when Richard went to the Staff College),
David Priestly
,
F/O Cooper
and
F/Sgt Kay
as passengers, hit some high ground near Biggin Hill and
all the occupants were killed. The loss of Peter and Colin meant that some
changes had to be made in the Wing and
Os Dobell
took over command of 140,
Mike
Shaw
, who had commanded 'A' Flight in 69, was promoted to command the Squadron
and
Sandy Webb
returned to England to take over the Wing Support Unit.
That was not the end of this unlucky period for, on October 2nd,
Tubby
Longley
, who had commanded 'A' Flight 140 since March, was returning from the last
sortie of his tour with his navigator,
F/Sgt Taylor
, when they were attacked
by a
Thunderbolt
near Louvain and shot down: both were killed.
On Oct 7th,
Gordon Cole
arrived to become Wing Commander Operations and it
had been clear since the failure at Arnhem that we were to remain at
Melsbroek
for the Winter. During the winter months the weather gave us little chance of
doing much daylight work though many dices, particularly of Venlo Bridge after
2 Group's efforts to destroy it, were flown by 16: but other daylight sorties
produced little of outstanding interest and were mostly flown to provide basic
cover. Perhaps the most interesting feature during the winter was the decision
to convert 'A' Flight 140 to night work (the advent of the
ME 262
and
163
had
left the
Mosquito
too slow and unmanoeuverable for daylight work over Germany)
and to leave 16 to cover all daylight demands except for a small amount of survey
-
+
Sorry, your browser does not support inline SVG.