Kookabat, thank you for the item on the wonderful Howard Hendrick, sometime of 460 Sqn. I was very interested in this because on our return from India I spent 1948-1952 at Binbrook, 460 Sqn's wartime base. The squadron delivered one of the highest tonnages to the Axis powers but paid dearly with one of the highest casualty rates.
We were told of this history at Binbrook School, and to this day Binbrook Parish Council remembers the scores of young Australians who never returned. The squadron memorial stands at the junction opposite the school. The Marquis of Granby, their pub in the village a mile from the airfield, has long been a private dwelling but their signatures are preserved on the ceiling of what was once the bar.
One of the squadron Lancasters, a Mark I, serial W4783 AR-G, made 90 operational sorties between December 6 1942 and April 20 1944 (when it bombed Cologne) and was subsequently presented to the Australian War Museum.
The following information was prepared by Steve Larkins on the Australian Returned Services League website, to whom we are very grateful. Howard Hendrick was born on 2 October 1923, the son of a soldier settler , Tom Hendrick, and his English war bride who had taken a soldier-settler's fruit block in South Australia's Riverland. At the age of 18 he joined the RAAF with fighter pilot training at Victor Harbor, Parafield and Deniliquin. On posting to England he was retrained as a bomber pilot and posted to 460 Australian Sqn at Binbrook.
Howard completed 30 raids (a tour of ops) with the same crew and became a flying instructor until the end of the war. After further training he become a pilot with British Airways and flew scheduled routes between London and Johannesburg and Sydney. After four years with BA, Howard returned to Australia to take up a Soldier Settler block in Loxton, where he and his family worked and resided for more than 60 years.
Finally retiring aged 86, Howard (now 92) still enjoys a monthly Jabiru solo flight at his local aero club and has had his recollections recorded on ABC Radio, with these oral histories part of the South Australian State Library collection. This history does not seem to be online but if it is I have asked the State Library for permission to transcribe it for series publication in this thread.