Auction Catalogue

23 June 2005

Starting at 10:00 AM

.

Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Grand Connaught Rooms  61 - 65 Great Queen St  London  WC2B 5DA

Lot

№ 724

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23 June 2005

Hammer Price:
£60

An original “Cold War” period flying log book (R.C.A.F. - aircrew other than pilot - type) appertaining to Pilot Officer J. F. Parkes, Royal Air Force, with entries dating from training days in December 1953 to “frontline service” in Vulcan Bombers in June 1966, with several official certificate inserts, etc., spine worn but otherwise in good condition £60-80

Parkes trained briefly at No. 1 F.T.S., Moreton-in-Marsh, in the rank of Acting Pilot Officer, prior to being attached to No. 2 A.N.S. (Royal Canadian Air Force) at Winnipeg, Canada in November 1953. He subsequently qualified as a Navigator and received his first “frontline” posting in May 1955, when he joined No. 18 Squadron, a Canberra unit, at R.A.F. Upwood. As confirmed by a newspaper cutting pasted down on the relevant page of his flying log book, and his entry ‘1 O.D.A. (Front garden Marston village)’, Parkes was flying as Navigator / Plotter in Canberra B2 WH 909 on 13 June 1957, piloted by F./O. Ward, when one of their practice bombs ‘of the smoke and flash type’ fell from the sky and hit the ground a few feet from a man who was walking in the village of Marston. The latter survived the ordeal. A two year posting to No. 35 Squadron followed at the end of the decade and in March 1963 he attended a conversion course for Vulcan Bombers, gaining an appointment with No. 44 Squadron at R.A.F. Waddington later in the same year. He also operated in Vulcans of No. 101 from December 1965, but would appear to have stopped flying in June of the following year.