17 – Chatelaillon-Plage

 
Hampden AD728 VN-
50 Sqn
Date :  28 avril 1941 Mission :  Pose de mines au large de La Rochelle
    Décollage :  Lindholme
     
    Causes de la perte :        
    Lieu de la perte :  Océan Atlantique
     
Sgt Albert Charles EVANS WOP AG RAF 648973 KIA Inhumé à St Martin de Ré (17)
Sqn Ldr Duncan Charles Frederick GOOD Pil RAF 39459 MIA  Runnymede Memorial
Sgt Horace Cuthbert PAGE WOP AG RAFVR 908004 KIA Inhumé à Pornic (44)
Plt Off John George Embleton WILLIS Pil RAFVR 88228 KIA  

Awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross
Acting Squadron Leader Duncan Charles Frederick GOOD (39459). Pilot Officer Walter George GARDINER (43134).

Squadron Leader Good and Pilot Officer Gardiner were respectively pilot and navigator of an aircraft engaged on special night reconnaissance early in May. When flying low over the objective, the aircraft was subjected to heavy anti-aircraft fire, one shell bursting in the pilot’s cockpit, wounding Squadron Leader Good and damaging the controls and instruments. Although severely wounded, the pilot completed his reconnaissance, manoeuvring his aircraft to avoid searchlights and anti-aircraft fire, but then collapsed from loss of blood. In the darkness and with the aircraft at a low altitude and still in the danger zone, Pilot Officer Gardiner succeeded in extricating the wounded pilot from the cockpit. He brought the damaged aircraft back across 450 miles of sea, making a perfect landfall and landing under difficult and harassing conditions.
The London Gazette, Friday 17 May 1940