Obituaries

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Flight Lieutenant Charles Palliser :salute:
Flight Lieutenant Charles Palliser, who has died aged 92, shot down four enemy aircraft and shared in the destruction of seven others while flying Hurricanes during the Battle of Britain and, a year later, over Malta.
Palliser was a sergeant pilot when he joined No 249 Squadron on September 14 1940. The following day, which saw the fiercest fighting during the Battle of Britain, he shared in the destruction of a Dornier bomber south of London.
After a brief lull in the fighting, he was in action again on September 27, when he engaged a large force of Messerschmitt Bf 110 fighters south of Redhill. He pursued a single aircraft and fired two bursts from his machine guns. The enemy aircraft caught fire and dived into the sea. Palliser then returned to the main fight and a second Bf 110 fell to his guns. He damaged a third but ran out of ammunition.
On October 21 he damaged a Dornier bomber, but six days later had a narrow escape. As he was taking off, the airfield at North Weald came under attack by bombers, and debris hit his aircraft, damaging the propeller. With the Hurricane shaking violently, he managed to circle the airfield and land.
No 249 was scrambled during the late morning of November 7 to intercept bombers attacking a convoy in the Thames Estuary. Palliser engaged the fighter escort and shot down a Bf 109 . A few days later his Hurricane was damaged during a dog fight; it quickly leaked fuel, but he managed to crash land in a field in Kent.
During the early part of 1941 Palliser shared in the destruction of two Bf 109s as the squadron went on the offensive, with patrols over northern France. Shortly afterwards he was commissioned and the squadron was taken out of the front line to prepare for overseas service.
George Charles Calder Palliser (known as Charles) was born at West Hartlepool on January 11 1919. He was educated at Brougham School before studying Mechanical Engineering at technical college. He joined the RAFVR in June 1939 to train as a pilot and was called up on the outbreak of war.
In May 1941, No 249 Squadron left for Gibraltar, where it embarked on the aircraft carrier Ark Royal. On May 21, 23 Hurricanes took off from the carrier and headed for Malta, some 500 miles away, arriving with their fuel almost exhausted. Palliser was soon in action, and during early June shared in the destruction of two Italian bombers and a fighter.
In September the squadron received new Hurricanes, and for a few nights went on the offensive, Palliser bombing and strafing Comiso airfield in Sicily. A few nights later he bombed the railway at Gela .
On December 19 the Luftwaffe made its long-expected appearance over Malta. During an attack on Grand Harbour by Junker 88 bombers, Palliser attacked one of the enemy head on, shooting off a wing and watching the bomber dive into the sea. Two days later he shared in the destruction of two more.
At the end of January, Palliser was awarded a DFC. A month later he left Malta to be a flying instructor in South Africa, where he met his future wife .
After the war he was a flight commander at the Central Flying School, and in October 1946 he went to the RAF training unit in Southern Rhodesia. A year later he retired from the RAF and received the Air Efficiency Award.
Palliser settled in South Africa, where he worked as a design draughtsman. He joined Vickers Hydraulic Division, which represented the Sperry Rand Corporation, rising to managing director. In 1967 he became chairman of Sperry Rand South Africa, and in 1974 was transferred to Australia as managing director of the Far East division . He retired in 1984, and remained in Melbourne for the rest of his life.
A keen golfer, he was also active in his local bowls club .
Charles Palliser married, in 1943, Ruth Smith; she died in 2005, and he is survived by their daughter.
Flight Lieutenant Charles Palliser, born January 11 1919, died September 24 2011.

source: The Telegraph
 
v2 said:
Colonel Henry Gaston Lafont - last surviving French BoB Pilot has died :salute:
...last Polish,last French,they are getting fewer and fewer...

Ordre de la Libration
Click to expand...

Col Henry Lafont, who has died aged 91, made a dramatic escape from Vichy-held Algeria and reached England to fly Hurricanes in the Battle of Britain; he was the last of the 13 French fighter pilots to fly in the Battle.
When France capitulated in June 1940, Lafont was at the fighter school in Oran, Algeria, and was said to be "mad with rage" to see France occupied. Although he and his fellow pilots were ordered not to attempt to escape, six of them — including Lafont — decided to steal an aircraft and fly to Gibraltar.
They were led by René Mouchotte, who would later command a Spitfire squadron and be awarded a DFC before failing to return from a sweep over northern France in August 1943. Mouchotte identified a twin-engined six-seat Caudron Goeland aircraft, which had sufficient fuel. What he and his comrades were unaware of, however, was that the propellers had been sabotaged in an attempt to prevent the aircraft taking off.
They stole aboard during the night and, at first light, started the engines. In the event, Mouchotte managed to drag the aircraft into the air at minimum speed and made a laborious climb. Using a map torn from a geography book, the crew reached Gibraltar, where they received a warm welcome. A few days later they sailed for England .
Henry Gaston Lafont was born at Cahors in the Lot region on August 10 1920. On leaving school he gained his pilot's licence and joined the French Air Force in November 1938 .
On arrival in England, Lafont and his colleagues converted to the Hurricane and were sent to a squadron in Northern Ireland before joining No 615 Squadron at Northolt, from where he flew patrols during the Battle of Britain.
Over the next few months he flew more than 100 patrols and was credited with shooting down two enemy aircraft. On February 26 1941 he was the first of the pilots who had escaped to England to achieve a success, although he was the only one in his formation of six aircraft to return safely to base.
In July 1941 Lafont became an instructor, and trained more than 60 Free French Air Force fighter pilots. Six months later he joined the Groupe Alsace flying Hurricanes on convoy patrols and fighter cover over Tobruk, when he probably shot down an enemy bomber. In May 1942 he volunteered for service in Russia with the Normandie Squadron, but before joining he was shot down and wounded. He returned to England.
Throughout 1943 Lafont flew with No 341 Squadron on operations over France and the Low Countries. By war's end he had completed 230 operational missions, and he was one of the few to be awarded the Ordre de la Libération, instituted by General de Gaulle. He also won the Croix de Guerre with three palms and the Croix de la Valeur Militaire.
Lafont remained in the French Air Force, serving at the 5th Air Region Headquarters in Algeria during the conflict there and for six years in London. After losing his fighter pilot medical category, he turned to helicopters. He retired from the French Air Force in 1966.
In 1967 Lafont was appointed Director General of the Paris Air Show , the world's oldest and largest air show and held at Le Bourget since 1909. He remained in the post until 1984.
In addition to his wartime awards, Lafont was appointed Commandeur de la Légion d'honneur. In 2002 he published Aviateurs de la Liberté. Mémorial des Forces Aériennes Françaises Libres.
At his funeral at Les Invalides in Paris, the colours of the French Fighter Pilots' Association were carried in his honour in the presence of senior French Air Force and RAF officers.
Henry Lafont was twice married, and is survived by two sons and a daughter.

:salute:

source: The Telegraph
 
Captain Jeff Gledhill :salute:

Captain Jeff Gledhill, who has died aged 90, divebombed the German battleship Tirpitz and fought to preserve the Australian carrier Melbourne.
Gledhill was a sub-lieutenant when, shortly after 0430 on April 3 1944, he took off from the carrier Victorious in his Fairey Barracuda dive-bomber as part of an attack (code-named Operation Tungsten) on the German warship. On his final approach to the Norwegian fjords, where the ship was hiding, Gledhill climbed over mountains to 2,500ft, then started a 45 degree dive and released his 1,600lb armour piercing bomb. Operation Tungsten was considered a great success: the enemy battleship was badly crippled by 15 direct hits, and rendered incapable of interfering with the D-Day landings two months later. Postwar analysis showed that Gledhill's bomb had struck one of Tirpitz's two 15in guns.
After further operations that April, he was awarded a DSC. Jeffrey Allan Gledhill was born on November 11 1921 in Wellington, New Zealand, and joined the RNZVR in 1941.
Post-war, he returned to New Zealand, but after study at university he joined the Royal Australian Navy in 1948, and was promptly sent to Britain to form 817 squadron of the Australian Fleet Air Arm. He became the squadron's senior pilot, and flew from the Australian carrier Sydney in 1951-52 during the Korean War.
In the late 1950s he saw loan service in the Royal Navy and attended the staff course at Greenwich from 1958 to 1960; by 1961, when he was a commander, he was appointed Director of Air Warfare Organisation and Training (DAWOT) in the Royal Australian Navy.
Gledhill's experience of operational flying had convinced him of the value of naval aviation — not least because Australia had no other means of defending her interests in the north against threats from Indonesia. As DAWOT, he found the future of Australian naval aviation in doubt (even some senior Australian naval officers thought it should go), but he staunchly defended the Service. Working with his supportive minister, John Gorton (who would be prime minister from 1968 to 1971), Gledhill drew up a plan to fund the refit of the carrier Melbourne and to replace its ageing British aircraft. He was so successful that in 1963 Melbourne marked her 20,000th deck landing, and she remained in service until 1982.
Later, Gledhill became Naval Officer in Charge, Northern Australia, and then commanded the training establishment HMAS Penguin. In 1968 he returned to New Zealand as defence adviser at the Australian High Commission. In retirement he lived at Avalon, northern Sydney, where he enjoyed sailing in the harbour and worked as a consultant to Lamoore Yacht Sales.
Jeff Gledhill married Third Officer Margaret Armstrong, whom he had met in 1944 when she was Captain's Secretary at the naval air station at Grimsetter, Orkney; she survives him with their two daughters.
Jeff Gledhill, born November 11 1921, died November 24 2011.

source: The Telegraph
 
I post this for two reasons. One, he served in the Coast Guard but also because his comic character, Captain America, took on the Nazi's.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Comic book artist Joe Simon, who created Captain America with the late Jack Kirby, has died at age 98, a family spokesman said on Thursday.

Simon died of natural causes on Wednesday at his home in New York surrounded by family, said Steve Saffel, who worked with him on autobiography "Joe Simon: My Life in Comics."

The first issue of Simon and Kirby's Captain America comic, released in late 1940 by a predecessor of Marvel Comics a year before the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, sold nearly one million copies.

While the United States had not yet entered World War II, the American public was concerned about the threat of Nazi Germany led by Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler.

The comic had the fictional Captain America take on Hitler, and punch him in the jaw.

"Joe's feeling was the comic books often succeeded or failed based upon the quality of the villain ... and he realized that they had the best villain you could have in Adolf Hitler," Saffel said.

Captain America is a superhero clad in the red, white and blue of the U.S. flag who gains extraordinary strength from an experimental serum and wields an indestructible shield.

"Among many accomplishments in the comic book field, Joe Simon co-created one of the most enduring superhero icons -- indeed, American icons -- of the 20th Century. If there ever were a superhero who needed less explanation than the red, white and blue-clad Captain America, I've yet to see him," Axel Alonso, editor in chief of Marvel, said in a statement.

This year, Hollywood movie "Captain America: The First Avenger," which prominently credited Simon and Kirby as the character's creators, made over $368 million at worldwide box offices.

Simon was born to a Jewish family in Rochester, New York. He moved to New York City as a young man in 1939, and quickly became involved in the comic book industry.

He single-handedly illustrated and wrote his earliest comic books, before teaming up with artist Jack Kirby.

That versatility made Simon a "Renaissance man" of comics, because he could do everything from lettering to coloring, Saffel said.

Simon served in the U.S. Coast Guard during World War II and later created the satirical magazine "Sick" which ran through the 1960s and 1970s.

This year, the book "The Simon and Kirby Library: Crime" collecting the duo's work in the 1940s and 1950s, made the New York Times bestseller list, Saffel said.

Simon is survived by his five children and eight grandchildren.
 
Kenneth Dahlberg :salute:

Kenneth Dahlberg, who has died aged 94, was an American fighter ace during the Second World War, later becoming a multi-millionaire and playing a significant, if unwitting, role in the Watergate scandal that brought down Richard Nixon's presidency.
Dahlberg was the Midwest finance chairman of Nixon's 1972 re-election campaign. After collecting donations of $25,000 he wrote a cheque which he delivered to the president's re-election committee in Washington. The cheque then surfaced in a bank account of one of the five Watergate burglars – who had been paid by Republicans to break in and plant listening devices in the headquarters of their political rivals. As a result an article appeared in the Washington Post on August 1 1972 headlined: "Bug Suspect Got Campaign Funds". The story immediately triggered three separate investigations and helped seal Nixon's fate. As one Post reporter commented: "It [the cheque] was the first real connective glue between Watergate, its funding and the Nixon campaign."
As a result Dahlberg became an object of intense scrutiny by federal investigators. Though they cleared him of any wrongdoing, his role in Watergate was turned into a moment of high drama for the film that documented the scandal, All the President's Men (1976). While Dahlberg admitted the scandal "made good copy", he thought it was unfortunate that incident overshadowed his many other accomplishments.
Kenneth Harry Dahlberg was born on June 30 1917 in St Paul, Minnesota, and graduated from St Paul Harding High School in 1935. His first job was at the Lowry Hotel washing pots and pans. He rose quickly, and by 1941 was in charge of food and drink at almost two dozen hotels owned by the Pick chain across the United States. Dahlberg was drafted in 1941, some months before the United States entered the war, and trained as a pilot. One of his instructors was the future Republican presidential nominee, Barry Goldwater, who remained a lifelong friend.
Dahlberg completed his flying training in 1942 and, like many other graduates early in the war, was immediately assigned to be an instructor, serving in Arizona. Finally, however, he was selected to be a fighter pilot in 1944, arriving in England in May. He joined his squadron on June 2 and flew his first mission four days later, on D-Day, having had just 30 minutes flying experience in the P-51 Mustang (he had trained on the P-47 Thunderbolt).
During August he was leading his flight when it encountered a force of 40 Messerschmitt Bf 109s. In the ensuing dog fight he shot four of the fighters down but a fifth hit his Mustang and he was forced to bail out near Paris. He was sheltered by the Resistance and, after donning a disguise, bicycled back to Allied lines, then only 40 miles away.
Rejoining his squadron, his successes mounted until he transferred to a unit equipped with the P-47 Thunderbolt, which he thought much inferior to the Mustang. Attacking enemy tanks in the Ardennes during the Battle of the Bulge, his aircraft was crippled by ground fire and he was forced to crash land. He was picked up by a forward patrol of American tanks. By early 1945, just six months into his operational flying career, Dahlberg had crashed two aircraft and twice escaped capture by the enemy. But he had also shot down 15 aircraft, placing him 23rd on the list of fighter aces in Europe during the war and making him a "triple" ace.
On February 2 1945, Dahlberg's aircraft took a direct hit and blew up; he was thrown clear and parachuted down. Despite being wounded he managed to avoid capture; eventually, however, he was taken prisoner and marched more than 100 miles to Stalag VIIa at Moosburg near Munich. Patton's Third Army liberated the camp in May.
Dahlberg returned to the United States and joined Telex, a maker of hearing aids and hospital communications equipment. Soon afterwards he joined an Air National Guard unit in Duluth and suggested that Telex should use its audio expertise in military flight helmets. The company duly became a leading maker of headsets for aviators.
In 1948 Dahlberg and his brother began their own business. Over the years, he developed and marketed the Miracle Ear hearing aid, a pioneering all-in-the-ear device, which became the largest selling brand of hearing aids in the United States. In 1994, the firm was sold to Bausch and Lomb and he began a venture capital company called Carefree Capital.
In addition to his business career, Dahlberg also became involved in politics – a result of his wartime friendship with Barry Goldwater. Dahlberg was deputy chairman of fund-raising for Goldwater's presidential campaign in 1964. Dahlberg remained an active pilot, flying with the Minnesota Air National Guard until 1951 and as a civilian into his 90s. He was a generous supporter of the Museum of Flight in Seattle, and was a director of both the Air Force Academy Foundation and the American Fighter Aces Association.
For his wartime services he was awarded the Silver Star, the Distinguished Flying Cross with cluster, the Bronze Star, 15 air medals and two Purple Hearts. In 1945 he was awarded one of the United States' highest awards for gallantry, the Distinguished Service Cross but, as he was a PoW, he could not collect it. In the end, the medal was presented in 1967 in Washington, DC, by Vice President Hubert Humphrey, with the Joint Chiefs of Staff also present.
Kenneth Dahlberg married Betty Jayne Segerstrom in 1947. She survives him with their son and two daughters.
Kenneth Dahlberg, born June 30 1917, died on October 4.

source: The Telegraph
 
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