Operation: Patrol

Date: 19th May 1940 (Sunday)

Unit: 145 Squadron

Type: Hurricane I

Serial: N2598

Base: RAF Manston, Kent

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

Pilot: Plt Off. Kenneth Richard Lucas 41854 RAF Age 19. Killed

REASON FOR LOSS:

Taking off 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 HeIIIs between Warlot-Baillon and Verennes-en-croix, France, he was shot down by a German fighter. The aircraft crashed at 15:30 hrs, killing the young Canadian pilot. (some sources note the time as 16:30hrs)

N2598 was claimed by Oblt. Gerhard Homuth, his 3rd Abschuss, from 3./JG17 over north Albert at 16:30 hrs

Maj. Gerhard Homuth was credited with 63 Abschüsse, 15 in the west and the remainder in Africa. He left Africa suffering from Malaria but later volunteered to return to the front. As the Kommandeur of I./JG54 he was report missing on the 2nd August 1943 on one of his first flights in the east when his Fw190 was in combat with Russian P-39/Airacobras in the area south of Kromy, Russia. His brother was also killed in action in 1942. His father shot by looting soldiers in April 1945

Note: During 2003 a local researcher/enthusiast, Pierre Ben recovered various pieces from the Hurricane including the engine plate, Browning machine gun.

Burial details:

Above: Photograph and Grave marker - Credit: Operation:PictureMe and International Wargraves Photography project.

Plt Off. Kenneth Richard Lucas. Warloy-Baillon Communal Cemetery (Ext). Plot 2. Row G. Grave 2. Born on the 19th September 1919 in London, Middlesex, Ontario. Son of Richard and Elva Fern (née Johnston) Lucas of London, Middlesex, Ontario, Canada.

Kenneth was the elder brother to sister Shirley Anne Lucas and Ralph Hardy Lucas whose son, Kenneth Richard Lucas and namesake of Plt Off. Lucas contacted us in Oct 2021 and provided some NoK details for Plt Off. Lucas.

Also commemorated on this memorial:

Above: Capt. David Edridge Pinkney. 78421 Royal Artillery, attached to 662 Air Observation Post (AOP) Squadron, RAF.

Warloy-Baillon Communal Cemetery (Ext). Plot 2. Row G. Grave 1. Son of David Renny Pinkney and Daisy Pinkney, of Sunderland, Co. Durham, England.

A pilot attached to 662 Squadron, RAF Air Observation Post (AOP). 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. New photographs added and narrative updated (Oct 2021).

At the going down of the sun, and in the morning we will remember them. - Laurence Binyon
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