Happening now! One of our users Justin Worrell is completing pilot bios and related ORB entries for pilots in 73 and 94 squadron.
Justin’s great grandmother Rose O’Keefe’s son
Henry was in 94 and 73 squadron. When he visited Greece in his 20's he visited Phaleron War Cemetery and found his headstone along with reading most of the others there as well. Over the years he tried to find out what happened to Henry and those who flew with him. With the internet things become a lot easier.
We’ve seen this pattern before, as the ORBs (publicly available at IWM) become a source of great detail to understand what type of flying a relative would have done. In the case of 73 and 94 squadron pilots, at that later stage of the war, in the North African, Italian, Yugoslavian (via Italy), and Greek theatres - it was less air to air combat and more convoy patrol, ground strafing, and bombing. Flying in at close range, flak took many and occasionally a bomb hangup as well.
Read more about 73 and 94 squadron pilots here and read about the Spitfire serials flown and the missions ranging from escort, formation flying, rescue, ground attack, intercepts and air to air combat.
As Justin says “I found the archives site and then there was no stopping me. I've added mostly 73 & 94 squadron pilots. I think I've added 30 to 35 pilots and added aircrafts flown to pilot pages for pilots that are already on the site.”
We see Justin’s updates coming in, and, for a typical pilot he’s adding anywhere from 20 to 40 sortie entries with serial number, ORB note, and date. I’d put his post count somewhere close to 1,000 and counting. It’s fascinating stuff, especially when a reader can then click the spitfire serial flown by a pilot and in turn find out who else flew that spitfire and when. It just goes in circles (turns), and that is part of the discovery process we’ve enabled for those digging for info.
Justin says “All the pilots that I added are very interesting to read about. Strafing in Yugoslavia & Greece was a dangerous job you got to hand it to these young men. Many had to bale out or crash land,
Henry John O'Keefe, Bennett Clarke, Frank Cecil Bremner, James Cecil McCall just to name a few".
(NOTE: place a last name in our pilot search after clicking pilots, you will get their page and aircraft serials flown with dates and note).
Justin took flying lessons at Biggin Hill at 22 years of age in a Robin 3000. As he says "Not the same as a Spitfire but at least I was in the clouds". Growing up near Biggin hill, the airshow every year was just up the road for him.
Justin lives in Southeast Asia now and thanks to the internet, he’s just as close to the action as any of us using the site from Britain, Canada, Holland, USA, Poland, Canada, Trinidad, or Malta. (etc etc).
Thanks Justin.
