Obituaries

[Wildr1]

I met Merle in the late 90's, he had an interest in observation A/C that I was posting from my collection. He generously added to that as well as sent me information on early U.S. aviation and Bendix racers. Let me tell you about Merle. Enlisting in the Air Corp in 1942, he became a member of the 357th Fighter Group with the 8th Air Force and Crew Chief for the P-51 Mustangs flying out of Leiston Air Field, England during WWII. He served 22 years active duty, then 20 years in the same capacity in the Air Force and Army Aviation, retiring in 1985. He was historian for the WWII 357th Fighter Group and a lifetime member of the Air Force Sergeants Assn., the Mighty 8th AF Museum and the Wright Patterson Air Force Museum. He also was a lifetime member of the American Aviation Historical Society. Olmsted wrote many articles and supplied hundreds of pictures and much information for the AAHS Journal (a very good publication). He was an amateur aviation artist, an expert scratch-built modeler, and shared his knowledge of aviation with many enthusiasts worldwide. His extensive collection of information, pictures, film, and other items are being donated to the Mighty 8th Museum. He was a noted historian and author of numerous articles and 3 books, his latest being "To War With the Yoxford Boys". Olmsted was honored in September 2007 at the Gathering of Mustangs and Legends at Rickenbacker Airport, Columbus, Ohio, as one of the 51 men and women who flew or maintained the P-51 Mustangs in WWII. Olmsted died January 9, 2008, at age 84 in his Springfield, Mo. home. I will post info and photos he sent me from his collection.

Merle in his 80's,
Merle is on the right below

 

[Wurger]

 

[Wildr1]

 

[Wayne Little]

 

[v2]

F/Lt Humphrey Phillips

Flight Lieutenant Humphrey Phillips, who has died aged 97, flew as a flight engineer on Lancasters at the height of Bomber Command's main offensive against Berlin. In November 1943 he joined No 626 Squadron just as the main bombing effort was directed against the German capital. The Luftwaffe night-fighter force was at its most formidable and losses among the bomber crews were higher than at any other period of the war. Within the first five days of joining the squadron Phillips and his crew made three hazardous sorties to the city. Over the next few weeks he went on to complete nine operations to Berlin in addition to attacking other major industrial centres. On the night of April 26 1944 he was flying with the deputy squadron commander when they were tasked to bomb an armaments factory in Essen. Just as the attack from 18,000 ft was completed, bombs from an aircraft flying just above them hit their Lancaster. Phillips grabbed an oxygen bottle, moved down the fuselage to investigate and discovered extensive damage near the gun turret and bomb bay. He found the mid-upper gunner unconscious, having lost his oxygen mask, and with a bad head wound.
He reported to the pilot who immediately descended to a safe altitude. With another crew member, Phillips administered oxygen to the wounded gunner and managed to get him to the rest bunk. At the end of the journey back to Lincolnshire, the pilot landed the badly damaged bomber and the gunner was taken to hospital where he recovered. A few weeks later, Phillips and his New Zealand pilot, Squadron Leader Johnny Neilson, were awarded the DFC.
Humphrey Bernard Phillips was born in North London on August 20 1920 and left school aged 15 to become an apprentice motor mechanic. He joined the RAF in June 1940 and became a fitter/mechanic, serving on bomber squadrons in Lincolnshire. With the introduction of the four-engine bomber, a new aircrew category of flight engineer was created to be responsible for the management of the engines and fuel system. The initial candidates were drawn from serving RAF mechanics and in April 1942 Phillips was one of the first to volunteer. After a brief course he joined No 102 Squadron Conversion Flight as an instructor. On the night of May 30-31 1942 Bomber Command launched the first of the "Thousand Bomber" raids.
To make up the numbers, the bombers in training units had to be used and Phillips flew in a Halifax with a scratch crew on the raid to Cologne, his first operation. A few nights later he flew on the second raid, this time to Essen. During his time as the engineer leader on the conversion unit, Phillips supervised the training of flight engineers and invented a number of training aids. At the end of his tour he was commissioned and mentioned in despatches. He left No 626 Squadron in the summer of 1944 having completed 27 operations, becoming an instructor and engineer leader at a bomber training unit where he was again mentioned in despatches.
Phillips was demobilised in April 1946 with the rank of flight lieutenant. For many years he enjoyed a successful career as transport manager for the 600 Group, a manufacturer and distributor of machine tools.
He became involved in the Freight Transport Association, serving on various committees and liaising with the Ministry of Transport.
He was an enthusiastic tennis player and in 2017, when his autobiography, A Thousand and One, was published, he became, aged 97, one of Britain's oldest published authors.
In 1949 Humphrey Phillips married Iris Webber. She died in 2011. Their three daughters survive him.
Humphrey Phillips, born August 20 1920, died April 26 2018.

Source: The Telegraph

 

[Gnomey]

 

[v2]

Stanley Chambers

Stanley Chamber a born-and-bred Ipswich veteran who flew Spitfires during the Second World War.
Stanley spent some time at RAF Martlesham. Fighting over the coast of England protecting England from German bombers, then later in the war shot down two doodle bugs. Stanley also took part in the D-Day landings and the liberation of France, protecting the sky's from enemy fighters as the landings took place. After the War he joined the navy. Stanley has lived in Ipswich all his life going to school at Northgate high. His earliest memory was seeing horses ,artillery and soldiers filling the streets of Ipswich during the First World War...


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dM4EMzxFrfU

 

[Gnomey]

 

[vikingBerserker]

 

[fubar57]

 

[at6]

 

[fubar57]

Posted in the wrong thread

 

[N4521U]

So many of the last will be joining their mates sooner than we would like.
We salute them all, lest we forget.

 

[v2]

Donald John "Don" Sheppard

Commander Don Sheppard, who has died aged 94, saw service from the Arctic to the Far East and became an air ace while only 21.
On the afternoon of January 4, 1945 during the Fleet Air Arm raid on Pangkalanbrandan, an oil-terminal in North Sumatra, Sheppard flew fighter cover over a force of some 100 aircraft from three British carriers, Victorious, Indomitable and Indefatigable. He saw enemy fighters 'coming straight down at top speed and as I rolled over to attack [one] he attempted to evade me by rolling over on his back and pulling through but I fired a burst at him from short range and he bailed, whether he was hit or because he was merely frightened'. While regaining height to re-join the escort Sheppard saw a second Japanese Oscar fighter and 'was able to quickly despatch him'.
He was wingman to Lt Col Ronnie Hay RM, was in overall charge of the attack, who wrote that Sheppard had 'shown the greatest keenness and determination to get to grips with the enemy; He has trained himself to a high standard of skill in the air and had made every effort to become a first class fighter pilot. He was worked with energy and success improving the standard of armament maintenance in the squadron'. The latter was a reference to Sheppard's role in ensuring that that every gun in his squadron worked and that there were no jams. He was awarded the DSC.
Then on January 24, while flying combat air patrol during a raid on Japanese-held oil refineries at Palembang, Sheppard was jumped from above by another Oscar; Sheppard turned his aircraft and hit the Japanese with his second burst. During another raid, five days later 'a vigorous dogfight' developed at low level 'against a very competent and aggressive opponent', when Sheppard shared two kills with Hay.
By May 1945 the allies were gaining air superiority, and the Japanese introduced kamikaze, or suicide air attacks. Sheppard, now a leader of his own flight of three Corsairs, was launched to investigate an intermittent radar contact. High above him just out of the cloud, Sheppard spotted a Japanese dive-bomber, which he shot down at his first pass, He could not avoid a massive fireball, but nursed his damaged aircraft back to Victorious.
Donald John Sheppard was born in Toronto where his father was a lawyer and mother a schoolteacher, and he was educated at Lawrence Park Collegiate Institute, Toronto. With his two brothers they spent their summers on Lake Simcoe where they learned to sail: all would join the wartime Royal Navy. Don, inspired by reading about the Fleet Air Arm's attack on Taranto and the hunt for the Bismarck, volunteered and took ship to England to join No 38 Pilots Course. After basic training he recrossed the Atlantic to learn to fly, and first flew solo in September after 13 hours. On his first day in 738 Naval Air Squadron, unused to the higher torque of the high performance machines with which the FAA was becoming equipped, he made a rare pilot error and crashed on take-off, but soon he had clocked up several score hours flying in single-engined warplanes. In October 1943 Shepard joined 1835 NAS and learned to fly the Chance Vought Corsair, which had been rejected as a carrier aircraft by the USN. With its air of scarcely concealed menace, it inspired almost as much fear in the hearts of those who were going to fly it as in the enemy, but once mastered it could out-fly most aircraft, and it had an endurance of five hours. Sheppard made his first deck-landing on USS Charger on 22 November 1943, and in March 1944 he embarked in the British fleet carrier Victorious to prepare for Operation Tungsten, the raid on the German battleship Tirpitz which was hiding in Kaafjord in northern Norway. On April 3 1944, the German was hit by 16 bombs which left her useless as a warship. After further raids in northern waters, Victorious deployed to the Far East.
Postwar Sheppard joined the Royal Canadian Navy, where he completed 112 decklandings and flew 2,655 hours in 25 types of aircraft. After six years at NATO Headquarters in Europe he retired in 1974. Sheppard never bragged about his war, and embraced reconciliation, his son once finding him watching old television movies with a German who had been in his gunsights.
Sheppard farmed for several years in the Annapolis Valley, Nova Scotia. An avid woodsman, who fed his young family on moose and salmon, gradually his relationship with animals changed, and he gave up hunting. He wept openly when his favourite horse was struck by a car. Instead he built a home overlooking Aurora, Ontario, where he enjoyed walking his dogs in the early mornings before the golfers were up. There he and his wife hosted a new generation of children, and he was the best of neighbours, up early after snowstorms to clear their drives, and for many years driving the elderly to medical appointments and picnics at the beach.
In 1947 he married Gwen Falls, the sister of a fellow navy pilot, the future Canadian Chief of Defence Staff, Admiral Robert Falls. They married in December, for maximum tax benefit, and after a brief, extravagant wedding at Toronto's Royal York Hotel, they set off in his old car on the long drive to Nova Scotia, and spent their honeymoon broken down in a blizzard in rural New York. She predeceased him in 2016 and he is survived by three daughters and two sons.
A brother who also flew Corsairs, was killed in a flying accident in the carrier Formidable in March 1945.
Don Sheppard, born January 21, 1924, died May 2, 2018.

…

Lt. Barry Hayter, Lt. Don "Pappy" McLeod and Lt. Don J. Sheppard aboard HMS Victorious

 

[Wurger]

 

[Wayne Little]

 

[fubar57]

 

[Gnomey]

 

[v2]

Air Commodore Alastair Mackie


Air Commodore Alastair Mackie, who has died aged 95, flew Dakota transport aircraft on the three major airborne operations in north-west Europe towards the end of the Second World War, and commanded a Vulcan nuclear bomber squadron; later, in an unusual development, he became a committed and active member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
Just before midnight on June 5 1944, Mackie was piloting one of 24 Dakotas of No 233 Squadron that took off from RAF Blakehill Farm near Swindon as part of the Allied air armada heading for Normandy. On board were men of the 3rd Parachute Brigade who were dropped near Toufreville. Throughout the summer of 1944 he flew many re-supply sorties into the hastily prepared landing strips in Normandy and on each occasion returned with wounded soldiers. On August 27 he flew into an airfield at Orleans with food for distribution to the liberated Paris. On September 17, Operation Market Garden was launched, with the 1st British Airborne Division assigned the task of capturing the bridge at Arnhem. Mackie towed a Horsa glider and released it over the landing zone west of the town. Over the next few days, the anti-aircraft defences intensified and Mackie dropped supplies to the beleaguered force.
On the final day, his dispatch crew encountered difficulties over the dropping zone and he was forced to make three runs against intense enemy fire before all his supplies were dropped. He finally escaped at low level, only to discover later that the dropping zone was partly in German hands. He was awarded a Bar to a DFC that he had earned earlier in the Middle East.
In March 1945 Mackie flew on Operation Varsity, the airborne landings across the River Rhine. At dawn on March 24 1945, he and his colleagues of No 233 Squadron took off from a forward airfield in Essex each with a Horsa glider in tow carrying men of the 2nd Battalion, Oxford and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry. The gliders were released over Wesel and landed on the east bank of the river. As the war came to an end, Mackie flew supplies into captured German airfields and ferried liberated prisoners of war back to airfields in England.
The son of a British doctor awarded the DSO during the First World War, Alastair Cavendish Lindsay Mackie was born in Yorkshire on August 3 1922, but spent much of his early life in Malvern. He was educated at Charterhouse and won an Exhibition to read Medicine at Cambridge University, but deferred his entry to join the RAF. He was a kinsman of the Aberdeenshire political dynasty that produced one Labour minister, one Liberal MP and a Conservative county council leader. After training as a pilot, he ferried a Wellington bomber to the Middle East via Gibraltar. In August 1941 he joined No 108 Squadron, based at Fayid in Egypt, and his first operation was against Tobruk. Over the next few months he attacked targets in support of the British 8th Army including Benghazi and Tripoli. He converted to the US-built four-engine Liberator bomber and his first raid was a daylight operation against a harbour in Crete. In addition to regular attacks against Tripoli, he completed numerous daylight anti-shipping sorties in the Mediterranean. Towards the end of his long period in the Middle East, he attacked the Tunisian port of Sfax in December 1942. After dropping his bombs on the quays, he descended to 400 ft and made three runs to allow his gunners to strafe the warehouses and shipping. In mid-January he flew his 53rd and final sortie when he bombed Tripoli. He was just 20 and was awarded the DFC for his "great perseverance and tenacity". He returned to Britain and became an instructor on Dakotas at RAF Nutts Corner in Northern Ireland where he met Corporal Rachel Goodson, to whom he would be married for 66 years. In February 1944 he joined No 233 Squadron and began an intensive training period prior to the D-Day landings. After the war, Mackie flew Dakotas on worldwide routes before becoming a flying instructor. This led to his appointment to the Examining Wing at the Central Flying School. He was assessed as an A 1 instructor, the highest qualification, and he and his team travelled widely assessing the standard of pilot instruction in the RAF and in Commonwealth air forces. After attending Staff College he was posted to Singapore, where he enjoyed a stimulating appointment as a member of the Joint Intelligence Staff. Throughout his career, Mackie had a passion for flying and took every opportunity to fly during his ground appointments. In Singapore he often flew RAF aircraft at weekends on exercises to test the island's air defences. In early 1956 he returned to a flying appointment as the Wing Commander Flying at RAF Waddington, where he flew the Canberra bomber. In October 1957 he took command of the second squadron of Vulcan bombers to be formed, No 101 Squadron. He found the four-engined bomber an exhilarating aircraft to fly (second only to the Spitfire in his opinion) and he travelled widely to demonstrate its capabilities including visits to Nigeria, Kenya, the Far East and Canada.
The Vulcans of No 101 Squadron formed part of the UK's strategic nuclear deterrent, and Mackie and his crews were regularly tested in war procedures. Much as he loved to fly the aircraft, Mackie, an intellectual with an inquiring mind, began to have doubts about the validity of Britain's independent nuclear deterrent force, which he saw more as a tool for domestic politics rather than a viable threat to the Soviet Union. This view was reinforced during his next appointment when he served on the directing staff of the Joint Service Staff College.
After serving in Whitehall as the Deputy Secretary of the Joint Intelligence Committee Secretariat, an appointment he disliked and where his contempt for the British nuclear weapon policy increased, he was appointed to command RAF Colerne near Bath, which housed two squadrons of Hastings long-range transport aircraft. He flew regularly, including weekend sorties giving air experience to Air Training Corps cadets in Chipmunk aircraft. With the support of his wife, he made major improvements for the welfare of his people and oversaw a base modernisation programme. He was appointed CBE.
In April 1966 he moved to the MoD in the key appointment of Director of Air Staff Briefing, responsible for keeping the RAF's chiefs fully briefed on key issues affecting policy and operational capabilities. He became increasingly frustrated by inter-service rivalry and the overt ambitions of some fellow officers of more modest ability. He was also disillusioned by defence policy – including the impending severe cuts masterminded by civil servants. So, in 1968, he decided to retire at the age of 45. During his later service he completed an external degree course in Law. After retiring from the RAF he became the under treasurer of the Middle Temple and then the registrar of the Architects' Registration Council. Later he was the director general of the Health Education Council. Prompted by his Christian faith, his experience of war and his disillusion with national policy, he became a committed and active member of CND and later served as its vice president. In his memoirs, Flying Scot (2012), he reflected: "Man's inhumanity to man has given place to man's suicidal inhumanity to the planet and his determination to destroy it. My shame at having been part of it as a Vulcan pilot is mitigated only by decades of membership of CND." As one of the few surviving officers involved in D-Day, he was proud to join members of the 3rd Parachute Brigade Association during their annual pilgrimage to Normandy to honour the dead. The French Government awarded him the Legion d'Honneur.
Alastair Mackie's wife Rachel predeceased him and their two sons survive him.
Air Commodore Alastair Mackie, born August 3 1922, died May 19 2018.

source: The Telegraph"

 

[Wayne Little]