NigG,
Finished early, as I've put a bit of "Pilot's Brevet" into it.
Some of the contributors to Peter C. Smith's excellent "
Vengeance !" have seriously misled him (no doubt inadvertently, of course, because, as I've once said: "All memory is fallible, and an old man's memory is particularly fallible").
The most unfortunate example (to my mind) comes in p.117 of the text. I quote verbatim:
..."Bud McInnes writes..............'After a month or so on ops we started carrying the large incendiary bombs under the wing,..
Never had anything to do with them. Think they were 200lb. Why incendiaries in place of HE ? - suppose something like a petroleum tank farm had come in range as they moved forward behind the Army.
...and the Squadron [110] did have one accident in this regard - where one of these incediaries was a hang-up for some reason. Although the pilot knew he had a hang-up on return to base he landed anyway, and the bomb fell off and exploded right under his wing. Needless to say, the aircraft went up in a ball of smoke, and no one was saved"...
This is supported by what he heard from:
...'Glyn Hansford who was an armourer with 110 Squadron. His mount was a three-ton Chevrolet rather than a dive bomber, but he and his companions played a full part in this campaign. It was one long continuing round to keep the planes flying, but some incidents stood out as he related to me [McInnes], and the one just mentioned was one of them'..........'There were many acts of courage and devotion to duty. One of the most vivid was that of a Canadian pilot, Flying Officer Duncan , who returned from a sortie with a bomb hung up, which he could not shake off at all. He attempted to land with it on, a very risky thing to do, and it blew up as he touched down. He and his aircraft were totally destroyed..
.
Now cf ("Pilot's Brevet") p.134 #2680, and see if you can make sense of it all. Clearly they had got hold of the wrong name. But weirdly,
Duncan was the name that had worked down to us at Digri with 8 Sqdn. How can such a hideous mistake have been made, even on the 'grapevine' ? (it had me at one time even thinking reluctantly of a possible
Martin Guerre scenario).
Who actually died ? Don't know.
To start with, I knew "Bud" (but always as "Red") McInnes (RCAF) very well; he was on "B" Flight of 110 Sqdn, and had come out with me in December, '42. He was later the first CO of 1340 Flight from its formation in September '44 to April '45, when he went back to Canada and I took over from him for a year till the end in '46.
Reg Duncan (RCAF) was a good friend on "A" Flight of 110 and was one of the Blenheim veterans. He was my mentor for my first (and only!) training ride in the VV. Flew on 'ops' with him many a time. Must have gone home very early on, for I believe the RCAF counted their overseas tour (as was only right) from the time they left Canada, and Reg would have had several months training in UK (inc OTU), and then spent some time on Blenheim ops before they went out to India.
...along with his little pet dog, which he had taken with him on every mission'...
Nonsense ! Impossible ! In any case, Duncan's "Spunky" had had to be put down a year before - and it wasn't a "little" dog!
(The Index shows a Handsford, Glyn 117. But the Acknowledgements list only a HANDSFORTH, T.G. M.T. Driver, 84 Squadron RAF, but he is not indexed neither is Handford acknowledged. We may be talking about the same man - but this is is irrelevant).
Back to normal, now!
Danny.