Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Three: Sergeant W. A. Jones, Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve, who was killed on returning from a raid on the “Big City” in a Lancaster of No. 9 Squadron in in November 1943

1939-45 Star; Air Crew Europe Star; War Medal 1939-45, in their original Air Ministry forwarding box addressed to ‘Mrs. C. A. Jones, 63 Saughall Road, Saughall Massie, Nr. Moreton, Wirral’, good very fine and better (3) £200-250

Walter Epsley Jones commenced his operational tour with No. 9 Squadron, a Lancaster unit operating out of R.A.F. Bardney, in May 1943, and by the time of his death six months later, following a raid on Berlin on the night of 23-24 November, had completed around 25 operational sorties, including two trips to Hamburg in the “firestorm” raids of late July, and participation in the famous Peenemunde raid on 17 August.

Of events on the night of 23-24 November, ‘Villagers at Belchford, near Ludford Magne, heard a four-engined aircraft circling low in the fog. They saw a brief glimpse as it clipped a row of trees close to the village church before it reared up, stalled and then crashed nose down into a nearby field’ (Alan Cooper’s Bombers Over Berlin, refers). A subsequent investigation found the most likely cause of the tragedy was severe icing, which may have affected the pilot’s altimeter. Two crew survived, with burns and other injuries, but the remainder were killed outright. Jones, the son of John Alexander and Charlotte Ann Jones of Saughall Massie, is buried in Birkenhead (Flaybrick Hill) Cemetery; sold with copied research, including eye-witness accounts.