LARGE, William Sydney

Stats:

rank: F/O
status: kia
airforce: RCAF    (no: J8147 )
born: 1916-01-16 Camrose Canada

added by: kurtis

This pilot flew Spitfire fighter aircraft for the RCAF / RAF (60% of all RCAF personnel served in RAF units at some point) in WWII, the initial record we have for F/O Large came from the database of Mr. Halliday, a Canadian military historian.

See the links to the right for more information and full service records held at Library and Archives Canada. He has no known grave, so is listed as burial site Commonwealth graves Malta. His date of death is Jan 1, 1943 flying in the Tunisian campaign with RAF squadron 81.

There are snippets of the squadron 81 ORB on the right which give some idea of this pilots activities in late 1942. He was from Kirkland Lake, Ontario (born in AB), single, and was very good at math and his own statements indicate he would have liked to pursue aeronautical engineering with a return to school post-war. Service record scans to the right indicate he was a very good and aggressive pilot, willing to initiate action. ORBs show he had shot down enemy aircraft during operations, and was also credited with at least one probable.

There is some debate as to whether on 1 Jan, 1942 he was shot down into the sea, or, crash landed in ER726 for which a candidate image exists (see our blog post on this matter) as photographed by German forces after ER726 crash landing (also see link for ER726 to the right for date 1943-01-01). His body was never recovered and there is no known grave. On 1-1-1943 two squadron pilots were missing, one KIA, and for F/O Large, the ORB scan to the right simply notes "missing".

A diary that F/O Large had been compiling was posthumously published in his name, detailing over two months of combat in the Tunisian campaign while in RAF squadron 81. This would contain various combat and living condition details including of one instance of him being shot down and evading with return to squadron (with broken ribs) in the latter part of 1942. Copies of this book surface online for sale time to time, and, may also be in various libraries and archives.