Obituaries

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Lt-Cdr Bill Henley

Lieutenant-Commander Bill Henley, who has died aged 88, was one of the few pilots whose war career spanned the age of the biplane and the jet; on one occasion he hunted down and destroyed a German U-boat.
In the early hours of December 13 1944, Henley was flying Swordfish L of 813 Naval Air Squadron from the carrier Campania, part of the escort for convoy RA-62 from Murmansk to Loch Ewe. Oberleutnant zur See Diether Todenhagen in U-365 had already attacked the destroyer Cassandra and blown off her bows, but in disclosing his presence had initiated a long search.
Henley and his observer, Lt David Chapman, continued their hunt despite the failure of Swordfish L's radar. Under the radar control of a second aircraft, Swordfish Q, piloted by Lieutenant WJL Hutchinson, Henley carried out a textbook attack. By the light of his flares, Henley saw U-365 running on the surface and immediately dived to attack. He straddled the boat with three depth charges, one of which bounced off the casing before sinking to explode underneath the U-boat. More flares showed an oily patch of water strewn with flotsam and what Henley thought was the upturned hull of his enemy. Postwar analysis showed that U-365 was lost with all hands. Henley and Hutchinson were awarded DSCs.
Maurice William Henley was born in London on March 25 1923 and educated at the John Roan School, Greenwich. He started work at the National Provincial Bank, and aged 18 enlisted in the Royal Navy as a naval airman 2nd class. He learned to fly in Canada.
Postwar Henley was seconded to the Royal Australian Navy, to help build up its air arm, and flew in an exchange appointment with the US Marine Corps at Cherry Point, North Carolina.
In the early 1950s he flew the de Havilland Sea Hornet (a development of the RAF's wartime Mosquito) in 809 Naval Air Squadron, which specialised in night operations, and he commanded 809 NAS in its last months in 1954.
In 1956-57 he commanded 893 NAS of Sea Venom fighter jets in the carrier Eagle. His marriage, planned for August 1956 in London, was postponed due to the Suez crisis, when his squadron was sent to the Mediterranean.
The ceremony took place instead in Gibraltar, while the carrier was under maintenance, and Henley was on honeymoon in Spain when he heard that tension over Suez had erupted. He hired a car and hurried back to Gibraltar to pick up an aircraft that had been left behind for him, and caught up with Eagle, which was steaming towards Egypt.
His squadron carried out strafing and rocket attacks during the invasion of Suez, destroying many aircraft on the ground, and Henley was awarded a bar to his DSC.
Henley retired in 1968, when in order to continue flying he joined Loganair ("Teeny-weeny airlines", he called it), eventually becoming chief training captain for 70 pilots.
Flying between Glasgow and the Highlands and the Western Isles, he opened several new routes, including to Barra, where he pioneered a scheduled service which used the beach at low tide for a landing field. When he flew newspapers to Stornoway, he called himself "the best-paid paper boy in the business".
He also helped to develop the air ambulance service in Scotland, and during his hours on standby he studied for a master's degree in Geography and Geology from the Open University.
Once he flew to Benbecula to collect a pregnant mother. Doubting whether the air ambulance's nurse was fully qualified in midwifery, Henley included among his passengers a nun from the island, who duly helped (at 7,500ft over Mull) to deliver Vanessa Margaret MacAskill.
He was chairman of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society's Glasgow branch, and he supported both the Scottish and the Glasgow Chamber Orchestras. He had a lifelong interest in railway timetables.
Bill Henley, who died on June 11, married Hazel Wright in 1956; she survives him with their daughter and two sons.

source: The Telegraph.

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Wheels

Warrant Officer Tom McLean

Warrant Officer Tom McLean, who has died aged 89, was one of Bomber Command's outstanding air gunners, credited with destroying at least seven enemy fighters, and was twice decorated for gallantry.
During an attack on Mannheim on the night of December 6 1942, McLean was the rear gunner of a Halifax of No 102 Squadron. A Junkers Ju 88 night fighter opened fire on his aircraft from 600 yards, wounding McLean in the left hand. With the mid-upper gunner, he returned fire and, after a five-second burst, the port engine and wing of the fighter burst into flames and it dived earthward.
Almost immediately, two more fighters moved in for a coordinated attack. Both gunners opened fire again, destroying one of the enemy aircraft and forcing the other to break away. The Halifax pressed on to the target to deliver its attack, and on its return both gunners were awarded immediate DFMs.
Thomas Joseph McLean was born on January 22 1922 at Paisley, and aged 18 he joined the RAF and trained as a ground gunner; his knowledge of machine guns proved of great benefit when he volunteered for the air gunner's role.
He took a deep interest in accurate sighting, range estimation and deflection shooting and throughout his long career worked closely with the pilots and gunners in his crew to devise evasion tactics, which they practised assiduously on training flights. This attention to detail resulted in numerous successes in air-to-air engagements.
On his first operational sortie with No 102, in August 1942, McLean shot down a Messerschmitt Bf 109 . Two months after the raid on Mannheim, his aircraft was returning from Lorient when it came under attack from two night fighters. The pilot began evasive manoeuvres under the direction of McLean, who then shot down one of the enemy, claiming the second as a "probable". Intelligence later received from France confirmed that the second aircraft had been destroyed.
After completing 30 operations McLean was rested and spent some months as an instructor before joining a Coastal Command air-sea rescue squadron. But, frustrated at the lack of action, he volunteered to join No 617 Squadron, under Wing Commander Leonard Cheshire.
On March 15 1944 McLean's Lancaster was returning from Metz in France when it came under sustained attack from two night fighters. McLean was wounded but he opened fire and the enemy aircraft burst into flames under the combined fire of the two gunners. The second aircraft then closed in and the Lancaster was badly damaged . McLean's fire hit the night fighter, which also crashed to the ground. The tracer fire during these combats attracted a Messerschmitt Bf 109, but the two gunners beat off the attack.
After a spell in hospital, McLean returned to his squadron and flew on the operations leading up to D-Day. Finally, after completing 51 operations, he was rested and awarded a DFC.
McLean briefly tried civilian life at the end of the war, but in 1946 decided to rejoin the RAF. He served as an instructor at the Central Gunnery School before re-mustering as a photographic interpreter and serving at Ballykelly in Northern Ireland.
In 1955 he retired and worked for a number of years as a barber before moving to Middlesbrough, where he undertook caretaker duties, continuing to work until the age of 80.
He was an accomplished landscape and seascape artist and a keen photographer. In his younger days he had been a proficient boxer, representing the RAF at the sport.
Tom McLean died on July 20. After his first marriage was dissolved, he married, in 1981, Kay Thompson. He is survived by both his wives, four children from his first marriage, a daughter from his second and by two stepchildren.

source: The Telegraph

Group Captain Billy Drake

Group Captain Billy Drake, who died on August 28 aged 93, was one of the leading Allied "aces" of the Second World War.
Five days after the outbreak of war, Drake and his colleagues of No 1 Squadron flew their Hurricanes to a French airfield to provide support for the British Expeditionary Force. Throughout the bitter winter of the "Phoney War" there was little action, but on April 19 1940 Drake met the enemy for the first time. His formation attacked a flight of Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighters and, in the ensuing melee, Drake claimed one, the first of many successes.
When the Blitzkreig was launched on May 10, No 1 Squadron was thrown straight into battle, its Hurricanes trying to provide support for RAF bombers that were suffering terrible losses. In three days, Drake, always a highly aggressive pilot, shot down three Dornier 17s and shared in the destruction of another.
Three days later he had just succeeded in setting a Dornier on fire when he was attacked from the rear; despite being wounded in the back, he managed to bail out of his blazing Hurricane. After a spell in a French hospital he returned to England to be reunited with the survivors of his squadron. He admitted that the situation on the French front was "total chaos".
Drake spent much of the Battle of Britain training fighter pilots but, after badgering old friends, he was allowed to join No 213 Squadron, flying out of Tangmere. On October 10 he probably shot down a Bf 109 before heading to Gravesend to join a reconnaissance flight whose job was to fly over the English Channel looking for incoming German raids. Flying a Spitfire, he shared in the destruction of a bomber and damaged a number of others. In December he was awarded a DFC.
Drake joined No 1 Squadron and flew the elegant Fury biplane fighter. In late 1938 the squadron received Hurricanes, and nine months later it arrived in France.
In October 1941 Drake left for Freetown, Sierra Leone, as a squadron leader to command No 128 Squadron and to provide defence for the nearby naval facilities. Vichy French bombers occasionally strayed into the airspace, and on December 13 he intercepted one which refused his orders to land; with some regret he shot it down.
Life in Sierra Leone was too quiet for the restless Drake, and his efforts to see more action paid off at the end of March 1942 when he left to join a Kittyhawk fighter bomber squadron in the Western Desert. Two months later he was given command of No 112 (Shark) Squadron, and so began a period of intense action during which Drake accounted for more than 30 enemy aircraft, 15 of them during strafing attacks against enemy landing grounds.
On June 6 he was leading his squadron on a bombing attack over Bir Hacheim in support of the Free French. Spotting four Bf 109s, he dived on them; all four were shot down, one of them by Drake. The French commander signalled "Bravo! Merci pour le RAF!" to which the RAF commander responded: "Merci pour le sport!"
The son of an English doctor who had married an Australian, Billy Drake (a direct descendant of Sir Francis Drake) was born on December 20 1917. After attending a number of schools that failed to cope with his lively temperament, he was sent to be educated in Switzerland — a country he came to love greatly, not least for the opportunities it gave him for skiing. On seeing an advertisement in Aeroplane magazine, he joined the RAF just before his 18th birthday and was commissioned a few months later having qualified as a pilot.
Over the next few weeks Drake destroyed at least five aircraft on the ground, and in mid-July he was awarded an immediate Bar to his DFC, for a raid on Gazala which "grounded the German fighter force for three days".
During the retreat to El Alamein, Drake was in constant action, destroying at least three more aircraft in the air and two on the ground. After a brief respite, operations gathered momentum again, and in September and early October he added to his score as he attacked enemy airfields; among his victims in the air were two Italian Macchi fighters.
In the latter part of October, Drake claimed a German bomber and a fighter. Over the next few days he destroyed more fighters, two Stuka dive bombers and two transport aircraft on the ground. At the end of October, two months before he was rested, he was awarded a DSO. During his time in command of No 112 he had destroyed 17 aircraft in the air with two others shared, a total exceeded in North Africa only by one other pilot, the Australian-born Group Captain Clive "Killer" Caldwell.
After six months in a staff post Drake was back on operations commanding a Spitfire Wing in Malta. Providing escort to USAAF bombers attacking Sicily, he claimed two enemy aircraft destroyed on the ground; and on July 7 he shot down an Italian fighter, his 25th and final victim in air combat (having shared in the destruction of three others). He added an American DFC to his decorations.
After returning to England in December 1943, Drake commanded a Typhoon Wing and attacked the German V-1 sites in the Pas de Calais. With his great experience of fighter and ground attack tactics, he was sent to instruct at the RAF's Fighter Leaders' School. Despite being in a training appointment, he frequently absconded for a day to take part in attacks against targets in France. His operational career finally came to an end in August 1944, when he was sent to the US Command School in Kansas before returning to join the staff of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force.
Drake spent the first few years after the war in operational headquarters, first in Japan and then in Singapore, but his great love was the fighter environment. In 1949 he was posted to the Fighter Leaders' School as a senior instructor, an appointment much to his liking and where he converted to jets. This was followed by his appointment as wing commander at Linton-on-Ouse near York, where he commanded three Meteor fighter squadrons.
In 1956 Drake became the Controller of Fighter Command's Eastern Sector. But he still found time to persuade colleagues to allow him to fly their fighters two or three times a month. Two years later he left to be the air attaché in Berne, Switzerland, spending the next three years in the country, a period he enjoyed greatly.
Returning to England in 1962, Drake took command of the RAF's fighter training base at Chivenor in Devon, where he flew the Hunter. A dedicated fighter pilot who had little interest in administration and staff work, he recognised that his flying days would soon be over. He thus decided to retire, leaving the RAF in July 1963.
Drake went to live in Portugal, at a time when the Algarve was starting to become popular as a holiday destination, and acquired several properties there. He contracted cerebral meningitis, which forced him to give up drinking (something he did not regret), but none the less established Billy's Bar. Initially this venture was successful, but in 1993 he decided to return to England.
Billy Drake was held in high estimation in the RAF as one of its most colourful and successful fighter pilots, and as a man who led from the front and inspired all those who flew with him. His great professionalism was accompanied by an infectious enthusiasm for life and mischievous sense of humour .
His great passion was skiing. He captained the RAF ski team, and made annual trips to the home of one of his sons in Switzerland, taking to the slopes until he was in his early nineties.
He was twice married (both dissolved), and is survived by two sons of his first marriage.

source: The Telegraph

Wow!

Indeed.

Agreed

Quite the resume there!

Duke Warren passed away, he was a pretty neat guy an identical twin who both flew Spits in 165 aqn RAF in WW2 (Gemini Flight) and Sabres in Korea , he was one of the main guys who helped convert the LW to the F86 including Galland, Hartman etc
Warren Twins - Bruce and Douglas Warren
A decorated Spitfire pilot who served during the Second World War is being remembered as a gentleman and a role model after passing away this weekend.



Douglas (Duke) Warren, who flew a Spitfire fighter as part of No.165 Squadron at Dieppe with his twin brother Bruce — also nicknamed Duke — passed away Saturday in Comox at the age of 89.



Born in Nanton, Alta., in 1922, the Warren twins joined the Royal Canadian Air Force​ (RCAF) at the age of 18.



The twins loved aviation from an early age and in late 1940 joined the RCAF, training in Canada until proceeding to England in January 1942, according to Warren's obituary.



After advanced training, the Warren twins flew two tours of operations with Royal Air Force Spitfire squadrons, it noted.



In 1945, they were both awarded Distinguished Flying Crosses by King George VI at Buckingham Palace.



After returning to Canada in May 1945, Warren married Melba Bennett.



The Warren twins joined the permanent RCAF in October 1946.



Bruce was killed in 1951, as a test pilot for the CF-100 jet fighter.



Duke became Commanding Officer of the F-86 Sabre-equipped 410 Squadron in 1952. The following year, he was attached to the United States Air Force and flew Sabres in Korea.



He became chief flight instructor at the RCAF's Operational Training Unit at Chatham, N.B., and then served in a similar role in Germany, assisting the post-war Luftwaffe in forming their Sabre Operational Training Unit at Oldenber as part of a Chief Canadian Aid Team, says Veterans Affairs Canada.



In 1970, Warren came to CFB Comox, accepting his final posting as operations officer.



Warren served a total of 37 years with the Canadian Forces​, including his time in the RCAF Reserve.



He retired in 1973, and he volunteered in the community with various organizations for many years.



Active with Royal Canadian Legion Branch 160 in Comox, Warren served as Branch Padre for 24 years, and he served in the same capacity with 888 Wing of the Air Force Association of Canada and the Korean Veterans Association.



Retired colonel Jon Ambler first met Warren when Ambler was wing commander at 19 Wing Comox.



"His story is like so many Canadians during the Second World War," said Ambler, who is now the volunteer co-ordinator/program manager of the Comox Air Force Museum. "Kids from the Prairies joined the Air Force, became Spitfire pilots.



"What made Duke's story unique from hundreds of other Canadians was that he did it with his twin brother. I've never heard of anyone else doing this — they flew together, and when he was flying with his twin, they were naturally called the Gemini Flight."



Ambler speaks highly of Warren.



"He was one of those guys that if you asked him to come around and talk to people about being in the Air Force and his experiences, he would always come and talk to people, and he was always happy and proud of it," he said. "He was a lovely man, very engaging."



Ambler saw Warren a lot at the Comox Air Force Museum.



"He was always a very affable and chatty person," he said. "He'd come to the museum and hang out and look at pictures of the Spitfires. He was always happy to be with people. He was a gentleman.



"He was very much part of the Air Force fabric of the Valley. We'll miss him for sure."



Bud Wilds, immediate past president of 888 (Komox) RCAF Wing of the Air Force Association of Canada, knew Warren socially, as he believes Warren was a member of 888 Wing for at least 25 years.



"He was a fine gentleman who did many things for other people," he said. "He was quite involved in Legion events and the Air Force Association and doing things for cadets and children in school.



"He loved to go to schools and speak to young people, not about his exploits, but about World War Two and about why it happened and why they should go out of their way to remember it and make sure it didn't happen again."



James Francis (Stocky) Edwards, who also flew Spitfires in the Second World War, considers Warren a role model for young people.



"He was a good pilot," he said. "He was a good husband and father and a very good officer, an example to all the young people. He was always a gentleman.



"He was a good-living man, and particularly, he was an example to the young officers and young people and the cadets."



Warren received many honours in recognition of his accomplishments and his service to his country and his community.



He was recognized for his community work when he was awarded the Governor General's Caring Canadian Award in 2002.



In 2006, he was awarded the Minister of Veterans Affairs Commendation and was accorded the Freedom of the Town of Comox. Warren was also awarded the Legion of Honour by the president of France.



Warren's funeral service will be held this Friday at 2 p.m. at St. Michael and All Angels Protestant Chapel. Following the service, there will be a reception at 888 Wing at 1298 Military Row in Comox.



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