Service Number 1198393

86 Squadron Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve

Reginald Arthur Dawes was born at 85 First Avenue Stechford on 6th January 1914. His parents married in 1909 and by the 1911 Census Arthur, a 24 years old toolmaker, wife Emma aged 26 and their eldest  daughter May, 10 months old were living at 143 Westbury Road, Ladywood, Birmingham.

He married Jeanne Lillian Bryant in Islington during the first quarter of 1937. Their son Philip Bryan Anthony was born on 19th March 1939.

By the 1939 Register, Arthur a foreman electric motors engineer, Emma a ladies outfitter shop keeper and daughter Constance an assistant at the shop were living above it at 322-324 Bradford Road, Castle Bromwich. Reginald, an advertising consultant, Jeanne and Philip were living at 3 Temple Terrace, Pound Lane, Billericay, Essex.

For the war effort, Reginald joined the RAFVR assigned to 86th Squadron. The squadron was attached to coastal command, the unit flying reconnaissance air-sea rescue missions, anti-shipping strikes and anti-submarine patrols.

86 Squadron of  the Royal Air Force was reformed on 6 December 1940, having been suspended after the WW1. Initially it flew Blenheim light bombers on convoy escort duties. In June 1941 the squadron was re-equipped with Beaufort torpedo bombers, and began minelaying sorties on 15 July. After flying reconnaissance and air-sea rescue missions for three months the squadron started anti-shipping strikes, with the first torpedo bomber operation taking place on 12 December.

On 7th September 1941 Sergeant Reginald Arthur Dawes was part of a four man crew in a Beaufort I W6542 which developed motor failure and was forced to make an emergency landing in the North Sea. Six weeks after the crash, on the 25th October 1941, the body of Sergeant Leslie Edward Butt, Wireless Operator, was washed ashore and was buried on Frisian island Ameland, Nes General Cemetery. The bodies of the other crewmen, Sergeant Sidney Robert Longhurst, Sergeant William Timothy Udale and Reginald were never recovered. Their deaths are commemorated on the Runnymede National Memorial.

Sadly, Philip was given to a children’s home where he grew up. Ironically in 1966, he married Edith Kosanke, a German, who grew up among the war-torn ruins of Berlin and emigrated to UK in the early 1960s where they met.

 

 

 

This post is based on research by Alan Fewtrell and Terrie Knibb and information supplied by Lloyd Dawes, Grandson of Reginald Dawes.