Orders, Decorations and Medals

Four: Flight Lieutenant W. E. Bowden, Royal Air Force, the first Allied airman to be taken P.O.W. by the Japanese, after his Blenheim was shot down off the coast of Malaya in early December 1941

India General Service 1936-39, 1 clasp, North West Frontier 1937-39 (Plt. Off. W. E. Bowden, R.A.F.); 1939-45 Star; Pacific Star; War Medal 1939-45, good very fine and better (4) £350-400

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, A Collection of Awards to the R.F.C., R.N.A.S. and R.A.F..

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William Ellis “Billy” Bowden, who was born in October 1918, was commissioned as an Acting Pilot Officer in February 1939, and quickly witnessed active service flying Wapitis of No. 27 Squadron in the North-West Frontier operations of the same year.

In August 1940, Bowden transferred to No. 60 Squadron, a Blenheim unit based in India, but in November 1941, after advancement to Flight Lieutenant, he was one of eight pilots detached for service in Kuantan, Malaya. And it was in this latter capacity that he was shot down on 8 December, after attacking Japanese shipping off the coast - the only survivor of his crew, he hung onto the tail wheel of his ditched aircraft for 24 hours, until finally being picked up by a Japanese destroyer. He ended the War as a P.O.W. in Tokyo, prior to being handed over to a U.S.N. Officer at Niimi in early September 1945, one accompanying reference stating he had been the victim of torture.

Sold with a file of research, including card mounted copy illustrations from an old exhibit, ‘A Guest of the Emperor’, and a copy of Unsung Heroes of the Royal Air Force, The Far East Prisoners of War, by L. and P. Stubbs, in which Bowden is mentioned.