Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria, to include the Brian Ritchie Collection (Part I)

Five: Master Pilot R. Healey, Royal Air Force, whom completed a tour of operations in Baltimores and Bostons of No. 55 Squadron in the Mediterranean 1944-45

1939-45 Star; Italy Star; Defence and War Medals; Royal Air Force L.S. & G.C., E.II.R. (M. Plt. (1601289) R.A.F.), this last in its original card presentation box with inscribed lid, good very fine and better (5) £400-500

Healey, who joined the Royal Air Force in London in April 1942, commenced pilot training out in Canada in January 1943, and returned to the U.K. on graduation towards the end of the year.

Posted to the Middle East, he attended No. 70 O.T.U. at Shandur before joining No. 55 Squadron in Italy in August 1944. Thus ensued a busy 36-sortie tour, one or two of them in Baltimores, but the remainder in Bostons, the whole as 1st Pilot. His targets ranged from marshalling yards to railway junctions, and gun emplacements to bridges, many of them located in Italy but others in Yugoslavia and Austria. Nor were these raids without incident, as evidenced by the occasion his Boston was hit by light flak in the starboard wing over a well-defended marshalling yard on 20 February 1945. One of Healey’s final duties with No. 55 Squadron was to participate in a flypast over Trieste in September 1945, when among the gathered throng was Winston Churchill.

Healey remained in the R.A.F. after the War, his flying log books revealing a wide variety of appointments and duties, ranging from a flight in a Mosquito for a Battle of Britain flypast in September 1947 to a trip to Christmas Island in a Comet in November 1957, and a lengthy “Cold War” appointment with 2nd T.A.F. in Germany. Having retired in the late 1960s, he trained as an airline pilot, and over the next 15 years logged many hours on European flights.

Sold with the recipient’s original Flying Log Books (6), covering his the periods January 1943 to September 1946, September 1946 to March 1954, April 1954 to June 1959, July 1959 to April 1962, May 1962 to May 1983 and December 1976 to April 1981, this last being a further record of the recipient’s career as an airline pilot which is first recorded in the the previous log book.

Sold with two further log books, both Civil Aviation Dept, for the period 1967-76