The Scottish War Memorials Project

Keptie · Joined: 24 Feb 2009 Posts: 664

Ive recently heard of a WW2 memorial to two young Fleet Air Arm men stationed at HMS Condor at Arbroath who was Killed whilst Flying in possibly a Swordfish flown out of that RNAS Base in around 1944 or 1945 .

The machine came down killing both young men nearto Gask Farm near Letham (Angus) and a wooden memorial was erected at the fatal site . It was said that both airmen came from the south of England and one family used to come north to visit the memorial at the locus each year . The Memorial was made of wood and each year the farmer's family used to put linseed oil onto the wood to try to preserve the wood . I would expect that both names would have been included on this wooden memorial . I would have thought that the two airmen families would have asked that their sons be buried in their home town in England and not at Arbroath's western or eastern cemetery.

PS The memorial was seen by a friend in Letham when he was a teenager in the mid 1960s and it was beside a banking in a field and he said there was a dead tree nearby that had been damaged in the fatal crash in WW2

Patrick w anderson
.

Keptie · Joined: 24 Feb 2009 Posts: 664

Further facts on this fatal RNAS airmen crew from HMS Condor at Arbroath in WW2 :

Crash near Gask Farm, letham angus was : Saturday 27th February 1943 when a Fairey Swordfish serial No K 8444 of 769 Naval Air Sqn flew from HMS Condor arbroath angus on an Instrument Practice . This was a Mark 1 Fairey Swordfish . Info has come to light that this machine had been built in 1937 and had served at MALTA, and at ABOURKIR in EGYPYT before returning to the UK to serve with a second line Sqn at HMS Condor Arbroath .

Casualties were :

Sub Lieutenant (A) BRIAN ROUTLEY HONEYBUN, 21 years , Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve , son of Arthur Emsley Honeybun and Dorothy Grace Honeybun of Northfields , Ealing , Middlesex . His body was returned to his home area and buried at Shipley (St Mary) Churchyard Grave D 44 in Sussex , England.

Sub Lieutenant (A). ARNOLD WATERHOUSE , aged 21 years , Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve H.M.S. Condor , son of Allan Wilson Waterhouse and Annie Waterhouse of Shipley , West YORKSHIRE . His body was returned to his home town of Shipley and buried at Shipley ( Nabwood ) Cemetery in West Yorkshire England. Grave Section B grave no 28 .

=

patrick w anderson