Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

A well-documented Coastal Command pilot’s Second World War campaign group of four awarded to Flight Lieutenant F. Hughes, Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve, who completed around 50 operational sorties in Sunderlands and Swordfish of Coastal Command 1943-45, in which period his aircraft attacked U-Boats on at least two occasions - he was subsequently killed in a flying accident

1939-45 Star; Atlantic Star; Defence and War Medals 1939-45, with card box of issue addressed to ‘Mrs. E. W. Hughes, 28 Palatine Road, Northenden, Manchester’; Memorial Scroll ‘Flight Lieutenant F. Hughes, Royal Air Force’, extremely fine (4) £500-£700

Frederick Hughes was born in Prestwich in October 1916 and volunteered for the Royal Air Force in June 1939. He embarked for training in Canada and the U.S.A. in February 1942. Commissioned as a Pilot Officer in early 1943, he returned to the U.K. and, on qualifying as a 2nd Pilot in Sunderlands of Coastal Command, was posted to 228 Squadron at Pembroke, in which unit he would fly operationally over the Bay of Biscay until June 1944, mainly in the crews of Flight Lieutenants Squire or Bowie. His Flying Log Book records some 30 anti-submarine patrols in this period and at least two attacks, one on a U-Boat off Brest on 4 January 1944, when Squadron Leader Bailey was shot down, and another on 5 June 1944. Other notable events included ‘sighted F.W. Kurrier who tried to attack’ on 31 December 1943, and the loss of Flight Lieutenant Grimshaw’s Sunderland in flames on 17 January 1944.

Qualifying as a 1st Pilot and advanced to war substantive Flight Lieutenant in January 1945, Hughes returned to the operational scene in 119 Squadron, another Swordfish unit, and completed at least another 20 sorties off the Dutch and Belgium coasts, largely on the prowl for further U-Boats.

Post-war, while employed in 1693 Communications Flight, a unit of the British Air Forces of Occupation (B.A.F.O.), Hughes was killed in a flying accident on 25 June 1946 when his Anson struck a hill near Osnabruck.

Sold with a large quantity of original documentation, including the recipient’s original Flying Log Book (R.C.A.F. type), covering the period April 1942 to November 1945 - two or three opening pages absent and his earliest entries undated, but April would appear to be the likely month in which his training commenced; R.A.F. identity card; assorted wartime period photographs (approximately 30), among them several portrait photographs and scenes from his funeral service and burial, and much besides, including official correspondence, training notes, mess invoices, telegrams, letters, postcards &c.