Family links to the Battle of Britain?
 

I thought to lighten the mood whilst we await the inevitable announcement, that some of us on here may have some interesting family links to the BoB.

I'll start with a fairly tenuous one - my English grandfather was an RAF engineer and used to fill in the craters on his airfield inbetween fixing the aircraft. My great uncle was Austrian and was dropping them from his bomber! Sadly killed in 1943 in an accident.

My English grandfather's claim to fame was that he Destroyed more aircraft than the highest scoring Luftwaffe ace - his last job in the RAF was in north Africa where he had to scrap obsolete bombers. He used to connect his tractor to one plane and drive flat out under the wing of another one, writing both off!
:cool:

My battles in Britain are admittedly still somewhat on the periphery of the 'Luftschlacht um England' but are nonetheless gallant and of essential importance. Space and humility prevent me from listing many of my most glorious attacks unfortunately, but I can tell you that in my most recent assault on London, for instance, I tutted audibly twice when made to wait for service in an hostelry, cutting the publican to the quick and wounding the entire borough. And on the very next morning I rang my mother and whilst conversing, effortlessly blanked the room service. I could tell from my mother's tone that she was blanking the room service too, and that lent a pan-generational, dynastic feel to the melee. By lunchtime I had sneered in Marylebone, pooh-poohed in Mayfair and been entirely unimpressed with Green Park. Lunch itself inspired a grievous wounding to the West End and propelled me onwards to the day's much longed-for skirmish in Holborn.

Unfortunately I know of no links between my family and the Battle of Britain, except my father and his sisters and brothers ran away from a boarding school near Duxford in the late 20's and behaved so badly that they were sent back to Australia.

I think at around the time of the Battle of Britain my father was training to go to Syria and fight the Evil French!

Cheers!

one of my polish customers was a pilot in the BOB,but thats as close as i get:)

My mother was married to a Hurricane pilot who died in the English Channel in mid-1940.

My father´s wife´s ex father in law was a Spitfire pilot during the BoB. :)

I know its not quite family but my step mother is still very close to her ex husbands parents so I´ll mention it anyway. As a Swede its very unlikely to have any connections to the fighting war but its something.

My Grandad joined the RAF as a result of the German bombing of London during the BoB (the family home in SE London was destroyed by incendary bombs as well as a 500lb bomb landing in the garden that didn't explode!!), he ended up serving as a Lancaster bomber pilot throughout the war both in Europe and the Far East...

He remained in the RAF until the 1960's.

My grandad served in the RAF, and he trained Battle of Britain pilots to fly using the (ground-based) Link trainer (the contemporary version of a flight sim!)

He also had some considerable personal flying time on the Tiger Moth and the Avro Anson (both aircraft modelled in CoD).

For more information about the Link trainer, see below:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_Trainer

http://www.aviationmuseum.net/link_trainers.htm

(it seems even the Luftwaffe had experience of Link trainers!!)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cessna1...er/1186929478/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mickb6265/3573289919/

http://www.raf.mod.uk/bob1940/f5403031.html

I recently organised a visit to my work for a group of old RAF WW2 pilots - a truly amazing bunch. They all had the most incredible stories and spending a night chatting to them was manna from heaven, interesting that some of them still hated the Germans like it was yesterday. Anyway, one of the guys had a slightly funny face and I couldn't quite work out why - he eventually let on that he had crashed a tiger moth in training and as he said, been ejected out of the cockpit when it crumpled, catching his face on the way out!:o

I thought he was 'expanding' the truth slightly but then he showed me the photos from his wallet - his whole face had slid down his head an inch or two and he spent months afterwards looking like the creature out of 'Hellraiser' (I think?) with all the spikes out of his head holding his face on. :o ending up as a test pilot flying Lightnings.

My Grandfather was a Spitfire pilot during the war. He flew with 243 squadron taking part in the Battle for Malta, the invasion of Sicily and the subsequent invasion of Italy, although he hadn't completed his training early enough to take part in the Battle of Britain.

There was a rumour, however, that he was reprimanded for "beating up" the Thames suggesting he was actively flying around the London area. Not sure when this was though.

He remained in the RAF until the sixties, training pilots on meteors with 74 squadron.

Sadly he died 2 months before I was born so I never got to meet him.

The closest I can come is:

An 'aunt' (my Mum's best friend :grin:) of mine's father was with JG 2 Richthofen. He was later shot down over France sometime after the BoB by a Spitfire. He took a bullet to the head. Apparently he disliked flying the bf 109. That's all I know.

Some collector, (or was it a veteran?) of JG 2 items came around years later and bought all the paraphernalia and uniforms from my aunt's mother. A real shame I'd have loved to have seen them, or got my mitts on them :grin:.

Incidentally a neighbour in her street is a von Richthofen and is related to the famous Baron.

Slick188, xnomad: thanks for your posts.

My great-uncle Geoffrey Pledger was a gunner in a Defiant for 141 Squadron during BoB...He died when his plane crashed in April 1941, presumably during landing.

I'll try to post an image up on one of those free sites someday soon.

My grandfather (also a Canadian) joined the RCAF just before the war. He ended up a Squadron leader, flying Wellingtons on night raids/anti-submarine patrol. He saw most of his action in the Mediterranean, flying out of North Africa and Gibraltar.

He was shot down by a 109 off the coast of Portugal. Thank goodness for the Portuguese fishermen that rescued him or I wouldn't be here today!

He died when I was a teenager but I still have all his medals, plus a pair of Nazi tank binoculars he traded from a Brit soldier who pulled them out of a wreck.

I was born on RAF Grangemouth which was a BoB airfield albeit ten years after the BoB. Does that count?

I have a few links to the Battle of Britain. My Grandfather was an anti-aircraft gunner on the 3.7'' and Bofors gun during the battle. Serving all over Southern England especially during the blitz. My Gran had a story of being buzzed by a German aircraft during the battle whilst on her way to visit my Grandfather by train. She said it was 1 of the most scariest things she had ever known.
My other link was that my old house was built on the site of an old RAF station (Croydon).

*EDIT*
This is for DefiantMK1.
You'll probably already know about this but I've just flicked through a few books I have on the Defiant and in Alec Brew's book, The Turret Fighters, Defiant and Roc on page 75 is a picture of your great uncle with Plt Off Williams next to their Defiant in early 1941. If you haven't got the picture I'm more than happy to scan it in for you.

my granddad's dad was a fighter pilot during BOB and went on to Canada to train new pilots. my other granddad's dad was a bomber pilot during the war and took part in bombings on d-day, where they took heavy fire and just made it back to base. pitty i dont know much more on them