Operation: Patrol

Date: 19th May 1940 (Sunday)

Unit: No. 145 Squadron

Type: Hurricane I

Serial: N2598

Base: RAF Manston, Kent

Location: Between Warlot-Baillon and Verennes-en-croix, France

Pilot: P/O. Kenneth Richard Lucas 41854 RAF Age 19. Killed

REASON FOR LOSS:

Taking of on a patrol during the afternoon of the 19th May. As with most of the pilots at this time inexperienced in operational combat. During an attack on He IIIs between Warlot-Baillon and Verennes-en-croix, France, was shot down by Oblt. Homuth (1) of 3./JG27. The aircraft crashed at 15:30 hrs, killing the young Canadian pilot. (some sources note the time as 16:30hrs)

(1) Major Gerhard Homuth (shown left) - top fighter ace flying the Bf109 (63 abschüsse - most of these during the North Africa campaign) - went missing on the 2nd August 1943 flying a Fw190A on the Eastern front. His brother was also killed in action in 1942. His father shot by looting soldiers in April 1945.

Burial details:

P/O. Kenneth Richard Lucas. Warloy-Baillon Communal Cemetery (Ext). Plot 2. Row G. Grave 2. From St. Thomas, Ontario, Canada. Next of kin details not available - are you able to assist?

Cpt. David Edridge Pinkney. (shown right) Warloy-Baillon Communal Cemetery (Ext). Plot 2. Row G. Grave 1. Further information: 78421 Royal Artillery - attached to 662 AOP Squadron - RAF. Son of David Renny Pinkney and Daisy Pinkney, of Sunderland, Co. Durham, England. A pilot attached to 662 Squadron, RAF Air Observation Post. On 1st September 1944, Captain Pinkney, with a comrade, was driving a car into the village of Warloy Baillon (Somme) to establish a forward landing ground, when they unknowingly approached a party of about fifty German SS men who were escaping into a wood. A French civilian at the roadside waved to them to warn them of their danger, but, mistaking this for merely one of the gestures of welcome to which they were accustomed, they drove on. As soon as Pinkney perceived the enemy, "with," in the words of the eye-witness, "an indescribable manoeuvre," he skilfully pulled up the car and enabled his companion to jump out and escape. Before, however, he himself could do so he was killed by a machine-gun bullet. He was buried in the British cemetery at Warloy Baillon by the Director of the Hospice-Hospital there - the Frenchman who had tried to warn them in the road. (information courtesy of ‘Lorettonian Society’ - website of the Loretto School in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Researched and dedicated to the relatives of this crew with thanks to sources quoted below and to the Lorettonian Society.