Ron Homes recreated those terrifying moments in his painting, A Night to Remember.
RONALD HOMES was born in London in 1922 and left school to study at Willesden College of Art. In 1940, at the age of 18, he enlisted in the Royal Air Force and after initial training went to Terrell, Texas, for flying training, where he gained his wings in May 1943.
On return to the UK for conversion training to Lancasters he joined 101 Special Operations squadron in May 1944, completing 32 operations. over Europe. After his bombing tour, for which he was awarded the DFC, he was promoted to Flt Lt and converted onto Dakotas, joining 238 Sqn to fly supply-dropping and casualty evacuation missions over Burma.
In June 1945 the squadron moved to Australia to provide transport support for the British Pacific Fleet around the South Pacific. After the Japanese surrender he joined 1315 Comms Flight and flew in Japan for the occupation forces.
On demob in 1946 Ron resumed his studies at the Central School of Arts and Crafts and spent the next 30 years as an industrial designer and manufacturer. He then taught painting at the Salisbury College of Art and with the Dorset and Wiltshire Adult Education classes. During the war he married Ione Baker, a union that would endure for more than 70 years. The couple had three children, four grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
Throughout these years he was building his own reputation as a successful artist. He had many exhibitions in Shaftesbury where he lived, the West Country and Suffolk and he exhibited in London at the Royal Institute Mall Galleries and with the Guild of Aviation Artists. Ron kept in touch with his Lancaster crew for the rest of their lives, but did not fly again until a friend took him up in a light aircraft from Compton Abbas.
Ron Homes died on July 21, 2015 and was still painting up until his death at the age of 92. He is remembered in the Ron Homes Gallery in the Shaftesbury Arts Centre.
Little remains of the airfield from which Ron and his crew struggled to persuade their heavily laden Lancaster Nan Squared into the air. After the war Ludford was used as a Thor missile base, but once these became obsolete the runways and taxiways were lifted and like so many WW2 airfields, all that remains are the ghostly traces of the runways long after their removal, a few yards of crumbling concrete and the carefully tended 101 Sqn memorial in the nearby village.
Amended to add: One Jay has made a nice little video of the airfield as it is today, aerial views of runway strips now used as farm roads etc. Poignant to see the Nissen huts, I wonder did Ron and his crew once inhabit one of these?
