roving (#11414),
I was with (but not "on") 608 1951-54, and there was only one fatality
AFAIK on the Squadron during that period, so it must be him. As I remember, a RAF Dakota brought the coffin back to Thornaby. The occasion was marred (I was told, must've been away somewhere - my own "Summer Camp", perhaps ?) by two mishaps.
The sad reception party repaired to the Mess for coffee and bikkies: the desolate young widow thanked the Dakota captain for bringing her dead husband home. Unthinkingly: "It was a pleasure", he replied - and then silently prayed that the earth would open and swallow him up.
Then Thornaby sent the coffin to a hospital in Stockton (North of the Tees and so in Co.Durham, in the baileywick of the Stockton Coroner), without reference to the Thornaby (North Riding of York) Coroner, on whose patch the aircraft had actually landed. This provoked a legal "demarcation dispute", with RAF Thornaby as "pig in the middle" between the two Coroners, don't know how they sorted that one out.
Remember "Boss" Martin well, grand chap and excellent Boss - even if he did give me one of the most sizzling "rockets" of my (Non)-Career, for the trifling offence of attempting, one murky-misty Sunday afternoon, to land a Vampire at MSG in mistake for Thornaby, and so causing Alarm and Despondency among the Glider community there at the time (and terrifying an old boy on a bike in the middle of the runway). Which did not save me from the wrath of the Station Commander Monday morning: "Three extra (Auxiliary - ie Mon & Tue) weekend SDOs !"
But they were happy days .........Danny.