A bombing target is issued for Stradishall’s resident Wellington squadron, No. 214 Squadron, but this is changed during the day, and the squadron is warned for an early evening start. A further order is received from Group at 16.32 that no aircraft is to leave the aerodrome until further notice.
At 20.07 F/O Oettle tells the Ops room that a planned operation for 419 Flight has been cancelled.
The Ops Officers’ log records that at 1120, ‘One Lysander, F/O Lee-Knight 419 Sqd circuits 1130-1230 hrs.’
This may be Roland Anthony Lee-Knight (37772). He has been with No. 23 Squadron, which in 1940 is a night-fighter squadron equipped with the Blenheim. This is the early period of radar-assisted Airborne Interception (AI) — that is, if 29 Squadron is equipped with the still-experimental sets. This entry suggests that Lee-Knight was briefly posted to 419 Flight. (No. 419 Squadron, a Royal Canadian Air Force bomber squadron, is not formed until December 1941.)
In December 1940 Tony Lee-Knight is posted to No. 145 Squadron, then again a month later to No. 91 Squadron as a Flight Commander. Between March and September 1941, serving in Nos 91, 610 and 413 Squadrons, he is credited with 5 victories + 1 shared, 3 probables, 3 damaged, and one destroyed on the ground. On 27 September Sqn Ldr Lee-Knight is killed while on a ‘sweep’ over northern France. He is 24 years old.
Shores, Aces High, Vol. 2, p. 395.
The October moon period ended two days ago. F/O Keast is scheduled to fly Whitley P5025 to Abingdon at 14.45, landing at 15.30. The purpose is probably for routine maintenance of the Whitley: Stradishall was a base in No. 3 Group, which operated Wellingtons, and lacked the equipment and trained personnel to service Whitleys. Abingdon is home to No. 10 Operational Training Unit (OTU), which prepares crews for bombing operations with No. 4 Group. 4 Group’s bases are north of the Humber, in Yorkshire.
The Stradishall Ops Officer’s log notes that the aircraft is not expected to return today.
F/O Jack Oettle is awarded the DFC. This is almost certainly for his tour of bomber operations with No. 51 Squadron which he had completed in the summer. One of these had been a reconnaissance which took in Vienna and Prague. The operation and the crew made the newspapers. Of his other operations, he was forced to bale out over England on one occasion, and was involved in a serious crash on another.
Farley and Oettle return to RAF Abingdon in Whitley P5025. It may have required maintenance; North Weald is a Fighter station, without the facilities and technical staff to service a heavy bomber; Abingdon will perform the Flight’s Whitley maintenance for several months to come. At 17.20 Farley takes off in P5025 for Stapleford, North Weald’s satellite airfield. (Its runways are long enough provided the Whitley is empty.) He takes P/O Greenhill with him. Farley has other duties, for he hands the Whitley over to Greenhill and takes Lysander P9027, one of the Flight’s new long-range Lysanders, over to Rochford (Southend) for the evening.
Greenhill ferries Whitley P5025 over to Stradishall. (According to Ken Merrick, Greenhill is a Lysander pilot, and not cleared to fly the Whitley.) Sergeants Bernard and Davies are aboard; Bernard is to arrange the Flight’s Other Ranks accommodation; he travels in the rear turret. Davies in the wireless-operator’s position in the cockpit. As the Whitley approaches Stradishall to land, Bernard realises that they are coming in at too steep an angle, too high and too fast. The Whitley’s going to stall: Bernard knows a crash is inevitable, and braces himself by grasping the cross-beam that runs through the fuselage between the twin fins, just forward of the rear turret.
In the crash, Bernard sees the rear turret is torn away from its mounting ‘like a rotten apple’. Up in the front, Davies grasps for a pencil that has fallen on the cockpit floor. It saves his life, for in the impact the wireless-operator’s position is crushed by the impact; the W/T sets end up where he had been sitting. There is no fire: the Graviner system isolates the fuel and triggers the fire extinguishers, but the almost-new Whitley is a write-off. Sergeants Bernard and Davies are taken to sick bay, but they are both fit enough for operations the following night.
F/Lt Keast is posted to 419 Flight. A pilot with a domestic airline before the war, he had flown several times to northern France during the Phoney War and during the German invasion. He appears to be the replacement for F/Lt O’Neill, who has been posted away within Fighter Command.