Forgotten WW2 coastal airmen added to memorial

Three World War Two veterans who served in the South West and died in the conflict, are among those being added to a memorial.

Sqn Ldr George Crawford and Pilot Officer Kenneth Brian Willson were both based at St Eval RAF base in Cornwall while Sgt Jack Saul Lockwood was based at RAF Chivenor in Devon, as part of Coastal Command.

Coastal Command was tasked with keeping British seas safe from German U-boats along with escorting allied shipping convoys of troops, food and munitions.

It was recently announced 12,500 men and women who died while serving with the Coastal Command, part of the Royal Air Force, would be added to International Bomber Command Centre's Losses Database.

Crawford was a pilot with No. 53 Squadron Coastal Command and flew Consolidated B-24 Liberator aircraft from St Eval.

He flew with a multi-national crew which included people from Canada and New Zealand. He took part in 21 operations and had been tasked with patrolling the English Channel during the D-Day landings.

It was during this mission his plane was hit by anti-aircraft fire from a U-boat, leading to the death of him and the whole crew. Crawford was 29 and the only body found was that of a crew member from New Zealand.

The International Bomber Command Centre said the project was poignant as more than half the people who made the "ultimate sacrifice" had no known grave.

Crawford - who was from Ham, which was then part of Surrey but now in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames - was given a Distinguished Flying Cross medal in January 1944 for an attack on a U-boat.

"As is the case with more than half of the airmen who were lost in the service of Coastal Command, the remainder of the crew have no known grave, and their names are instead included on the Runnymede Memorial," a spokesperson from International Bomber Command Centre said.

Four months after his death, Crawford's wife Leslie gave birth to a son in Belfast and named him George David Hugh Crawford.

Coastal Command was also known as the 'Cinderella Service' due to how it was overlooked and underfunded as Bomber Command and Fighter Command took priority during the war.

Many of the crews were based in south-west England as they headed out to protect waters off Devon and Cornwall's coast.

Willson served with No. 58 Squadron Coastal Command at RAF St Eval.

The International Bomber Command Centre said Willson, who was born in Dartmouth, Devon, on 11 April 1923, was part of missions including bombing attacks on the port area of German city Bremen and anti-submarine patrols in the Bay of Biscay.

The centre said during the latter, squadron record books said: "P/O Willson had the good fortune to sight two separate U-Boats.

"The first one was attacked and six depth charges dropped on the track on the submarine.

"An oil patch 100 yards in diameter was visible but nothing further seen.

"The second U-boat was attacked by the front guns and bullets seem to strike the conning tower and the U-boat crash-dived; nothing further was seen of this submarine."

Willson was on another anti-submarine patrol on 12 June 1942 when the crew in his aircraft became disorientated in dense fog and crashed near Cabo Ortegal in Galicia on the northern tip of Spain.

All six crew were killed and were buried side-by-side in the Bilbao British Cemetery.

Lockwood grew up in the Lincolnshire village of Scampton, which had its own RAF connections as the location where the Dambusters set off for Operation Chastise.

He trained as a pilot in Canada and the US before being posted to No. 179 Squadron Coastal Command at RAF Chivenor in Devon.

He flew modified Wellington bombers with special headlights known as Leigh Lights, which helped locate submarines just below the surface at night.

On his crew's third operation on 12 and 13 August 1943, Lockwood died as their aircraft returned to Chivenor.

Due to poor visibility, the crew decided to make another circuit to establish their position, but crashed into a nearby hill before the aircraft exploded due to unused depth charges still being on board.

The International Bomber Command Centre said the body of Lockwood, who was 23, was returned to Scampton where he was laid to rest within sight of the family farm he grew up on.

His epitaph reads: "He died that we might live in freedom."

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