This morning I googled on the name of Gordon Clegg, a 159 Sqn Liberator pilot and flight commander with whom I’d lost contact, and I found his October Telegraph obituary:
His RAF career, starting pre-war, included associations with Guy Gibson and John “Cats Eyes” Cunningham. Gibson was his flight commander on 29 Sqn. In fact, the friendly fire incident cited in the obituary, resulting in an amputated leg for his radio operator, is briefly mentioned in the version of Gibson’s book I’ve seen, “Enemy Coast Ahead – Uncensored”.
In India, Clegg was acting 159 Sqn C.O. on 29 Feb 1944, when two of the squadron’s Liberators (BZ926 and BZ962) were downed by night fighters during an attack upon Rangoon. He wrote a personal letter to each of the 18 missing men’s next-of-kin — a small gesture that, no doubt, meant so much to those families.
In 1991 I visited with him at his townhouse on Holland Villas Rd, London during my investigations into that night’s losses (when my mom’s first husband, Sgt George Plank died). He was modest to a fault about his varied war career. He didn’t even mention that he shot down enemy aircraft in the Middle East (up to four, per the obituary).
He did, however, confirm what another 159 Sqn veteran had told me: that Clegg had pranged a Spitfire when stationed in Kent on Beaufighter ops (probably at West Malling when on 29 Sqn). Having never flown a Spitfire before, he asked the engineering officer if he could take one up for a flight. There was one Spitfire in a maintenance unit on the field. Controls were quickly pointed out…and up he went. He told me that the undercarriage lever was tricky — something about pushing the lever down and holding until the green light came on. However, Clegg didn’t get it right, and the result was a pranged Spitfire.
On 159 Sqn in India a couple of his friends snuck a peek at his unguarded logbook and saw the entry for this flight. I could not resist asking Clegg whether it was true, and he came clean with a laugh and produced his logbook to prove it was true. I regret that I didn’t note the date of the incident or take a photo of the logbook page. But I do have a photo from that evening — of a dapper Gordon Clegg posing for the camera, with one of his logbooks on the seat behind him.
I asked him to speak at the memorial service I arranged at St Clement Danes church in 1998 to honor the two crews shot down on 29 Feb 1944, but he modestly declined, asking, “Why would they want to listen to me?” He attended, along with other 159 Sqn veterans.
Attached are other photos of him from India on 159 Sqn. Clegg is 6th from left in the group shot with the unidentified Liberator nose in the right background. In the crew photo in front of BZ898 Y for Yeoman, he is first on the left. The man in the center, Jack Harris, was Clegg’s faithful mid-upper gunner, but on 29 Feb 1944 he flew with the crew of F/Lt Edward Stanley aboard BZ926, as a beam gunner. Shot down, Harris and five others were captured and imprisoned in Rangoon Jail, where two — not Harris — died of disease and mistreatment. (Within two weeks a friend in Rangoon will be visiting the small village 30 miles away where I believe BZ926 came down and where three of Harris’ crewmates, including Stanley, lie buried.)
Regards,
Matt
By: Matt Poole - 16th December 2013 at 22:53
Thanks for your comments, Bill.
Yes, ops not only in the Far East but also elsewhere like the Middle East are just not as “immediate” in the mind of the average person. It’s one thing to look skyward and imagine that very sky filled with aircraft, ours and theirs, but with distance comes a general vagueness and a drop off in interest. And there is less surviving material for faraway places.
I mentioned that Gordon Clegg wrote to each next-of-kin of the 18 airmen shot down on 29 Feb ’44. Here is one of those letters, sent to Capt H.L. Davis, Royal Indian Navy — father of BZ962 rear gunner Michael Ludlow Davis, a casualty. (It’s from the RCAF personnel file of Michael Davis…who had joined the RCAF at 18 after being shipped off for safety to an uncle in Canada to continue schooling).
Yes, the correspondence is essentially a form letter, but it was a gesture that would have had great value. My 91 year old mother still recalls receiving her version of Clegg’s letter, for example, and that it somehow helped her in 1944 to know that her husband — still only missing, later pronounced deceased — was remembered by those on his squadron.
Another correspondence in the M.L. Davis RCAF personnel file is an enquiry from his father in Bombay regarding the return of Michael’s personal gramophone records. In passing, Capt Davis mentioned that “C.G. Clegg” did not identify himself by rank or squadron in his letter of condolence. Good point — and something a career military man of Capt Davis’ stature would have recognized immediately.
Regards,
Matt
By: Roborough - 16th December 2013 at 21:15
Interesting story and good pics. We don’t hear much about the RAF’s war in the Far East and even less about the FEAF Liberators.
Thanks for posting Matt
Regards
Bill
By: Matt Poole - 15th December 2013 at 23:09
Two more photos of Gordon Clegg for the curiousity seekers.
First comes a cropped excerpt of a group photo of A Flight aircrew, 159 Squadron, taken at Digri, W. Bengal on 27 Jan 1944. Clegg is at center, in the light-toned shirt. To the viewer’s left of Clegg is Wing Commander John P. Hopkins DFC, the C.O. “Hoppy” was ill one month later (invalided out of India later in the year), and Clegg, his flight commander in A Flight, took over temporary leadership of 159. On the far right is a fun-loving Englishman, Denis Boissier, who flew about a tour and a half as a Libertor navigator in the Far East — a full tour with 159, then ops with 99 Sqn, also in India. Hoppy’s brother, Dr. Tom Hopkins (himself an RAF flight surgeon in the UK during the war), sent me the original to copy.
The second photo shows Clegg (2nd from the left) and other pilots in front of BZ842, the P-coded 159 Sqn Liberator on the squadron before Pegasus joined 159. This is a scan of Clegg’s original print, which he damaged when removing it from his scrapbook to mail to me. However, a separate print sent to me by the pilot on the extreme right, John Falconer, clearly shows the letter P on the fuselage to the right of the roundel.
Cheers,
Matt
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December 15, 2013 at 1:56 pm