WW2 Coastal Command Airmen Added to Bomber Command Database
Three World War Two airmen who flew perilous anti-submarine patrols from West Country bases have been added to the International Bomber Command Centre’s Losses Database, joining 12,500 men and women who died serving with the Royal Air Force’s Coastal Command.
Coastal Command Losses Added to Database
The online database expansion recognizes personnel who died protecting Allied shipping lanes and hunting German U-boats during the conflict. Often labeled the “Cinderella Service” due to chronic underfunding and neglect while Bomber Command and Fighter Command received priority, Coastal Command lost more than half its personnel without leaving a known grave, according to the International Bomber Command Centre.
Among those newly added are Squadron Leader George Crawford and Pilot Officer Kenneth Brian Willson, both stationed at RAF St Eval in Cornwall, alongside Sergeant Jack Saul Lockwood, who flew from RAF Chivenor in Devon.
Patrols Over Devon and Cornwall Waters
Squadron Leader Crawford served as a pilot with No. 53 Squadron Coastal Command, flying Consolidated B-24 Liberator aircraft from St Eval alongside a multi-national crew that included personnel from Canada and New Zealand. He completed 21 operations, earning a Distinguished Flying Cross in January 1944 for a successful U-boat attack.
During the D-Day landings, Crawford’s aircraft was tasked with patrolling the English Channel when anti-aircraft fire from a German U-boat struck the plane, killing Crawford and his entire crew. Crawford was 29 years old and hailed from Ham, then part of Surrey and now within the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames. The only body recovered from the wreckage was that of a New Zealand crew member. Four months after his death, his wife Leslie gave birth to a son in Belfast, naming him George David Hugh Crawford.
Pilot Officer Willson, born in Dartmouth, Devon, on April 11, 1923, flew missions with No. 58 Squadron Coastal Command out of St Eval, participating in bombing runs over the German port city of Bremen and anti-submarine patrols in the Bay of Biscay. Squadron records cited by the International Bomber Command Centre noted Willson’s encounter with two separate U-boats during a single patrol, noting that depth charges were dropped on the first and front-gun bullets struck the conning tower of the second before it crash-dived. On June 12, 1942, Willson and his five-crewmates became disorientated in dense fog during another anti-submarine flight, crashing near Cabo Ortegal in northern Spain. All six crew members are buried side-by-side in the Bilbao British Cemetery.
Fatal Return to RAF Chivenor
Sergeant Jack Saul Lockwood grew up in Scampton, Lincolnshire—the village famous for its RAF connections to the Dambusters’ Operation Chastise—and trained as a pilot in Canada and the United States before posting to No. 179 Squadron Coastal Command at RAF Chivenor. He flew modified Wellington bombers equipped with Leigh Lights, specialized searchlights designed to locate submarines just below the surface at night.
On August 12 and 13, 1943, during his crew’s third operation, Lockwood died when their aircraft crashed as it approached Chivenor on the return flight. Facing poor visibility, the crew attempted an additional circuit to verify their position before striking a nearby hill, triggering an explosion from unused depth charges still on board. Lockwood was 23 years old. His remains were returned to Scampton and laid to rest within sight of his childhood family farm, bearing the epitaph: “He died that we might live in freedom.”