Corporal James Patrick McCann was born in 1926 in Clonaslee, Ireland. He died of exposure after being caught in a blizzard while training, in Snowdonia, for a climbing expedition.
2020 has been a very different kind of Remembrance, but our problems pale by comparison with the way people must have felt during the Remembrance of Armistice Day in November 1939.
Flying Officer Douglas Russell Manley was born 27th September 1922, in Wetaskiwin, Alberta, Canada. He was working as a gas station attendant in his hometown when he enlisted in the RCAF.
On 4th November, 1920, Flying Officer Harold Oliver Prout AFC and his observer, Flying Officer Horace Edgar Fenwick, were on the return leg of a trip to Winchester when they arrived back at Kenley, at 5pm, to find the airfield shrouded in thick fog.
On 4th November, 1920, Flying Officer Harold Oliver Prout AFC and his observer, Flying Officer Horace Edgar Fenwick, were on the return leg of a trip to Winchester when they arrived back at Kenley, at 5pm, to find the airfield shrouded in thick fog....
There will be no formal wreath laying ceremony at Kenley Airfield's 'Tribute' this year, but wreaths can be laid throughout the day, on Remembrance Sunday.
On 31st October, 1941, Nos. 485 and 602 squadrons took off from Kenley at 3.40pm, under the command of their Wing Leader, Edgar Norman Ryder DFC and Bar for Circus 109.
On 19th October, 1945, No.435 squadron, RCAF, had only been at Croydon for a few days when one of their Dakotas (KG439) stalled and dived into the front garden of a house in Mitchley Avenue, Sanderstead, not long after take-off.
On 20th October, 1944, at 20.09hrs, Batt.2./Art.Abt.(mot) 485 under the command of Hauptmann Neusch, launched the first V2 to land in the Croydon area.
On 24th October, 1922, Pilot Officer Matthew Charles Hayter became the first of roughly half a dozen members of No.24 squadron to be killed in flying accidents during the squadron's long stay at Kenley, between 1920 and 1927.
On Sunday 24th October, 1943, the 403 squadron, RCAF, Operations Record Book records the loss of F/L Herbert John Southwood, who went missing in the vicinity of Doullens, France.
