The Merseyside Few are the twelve pilots who flew in the Battle of Britain during World War II and are buried in Merseyside. This site is both a tribute to them, and a resource for anyone wanting to learn about Battle of Britain pilots with links to Liverpool and Wirral.
Merseyside’s connection with The Battle of Britain has captivated me. As well as the pilots laid to rest here, my research has uncovered a number who were born in, or have connections to, Liverpool and Wirral.
Visit ‘The Pilots’ to discover their stories
It is not my intention to give an account of The Battle of Britain, or to go into any technical details of the aircraft which took part. Nor will I describe the air defence of Liverpool and North West England during this time. Instead, I want to put on record as best as I can the stories of those Battle of Britain pilots who are buried on Liverpool and Wirral: the Merseyside Few.
Not all of their stories are complete (is any story ever complete?) so some pages have only basic details about the pilots. If you have any information about them, please get in touch and I will be happy to add it.
The story behind the Merseyside Few website
James Bond as not a name normally associated with The Battle of Britain, but he is the man indirectly responsible for my preoccupation with it. Well, Bond’s creator Ian Fleming is anyway.
In August 2008 I took a train from my home near Liverpool to London Euston with the sole purpose of visiting an exhibition at the Imperial War Museum celebrating the centenary of Ian Fleming’s birth. As well as his writing career, the For Your Eyes Only exhibition covered Fleming’s wartime experiences as Personal Assistant to the Director of Naval Intelligence and later as a Naval Intelligence Officer. A prelude to my interest to come.
I enjoyed the exhibition and, as is usual at these things, exited into a shop. After looking at the Fleming/Bond items I started browsing the books that really represent the theme of the Imperial War Museum, those on the First and Second World Wars. My enduring love of history was re-awakened as I stood looking at those books.
Growing up during the early 1970s most of my mates wanted to be footballers, to have the sideburns of Kevin Keegan or the white signature boots of Alan Ball. Of course I loved football too, but strangely enough (in the years before Indiana Jones) I wanted to be an archaeologist. I don’t remember what history I studied at primary school but I must have enjoyed it.
A Merseyside boy with an early and enduring love of history
History became my favourite, and therefore strongest, subject at secondary school. However, I once again don’t really recall what I studied or why my love of the subject continued. Until, in 1976, I began O-Level History.
My history teacher treated his class like students rather than school children and gave us fascinating lectures. It was a way of teaching I hadn’t encountered before. I remember studying Italian and German Unification and being completely enamoured with the stories. I did well enough to take history to A-Level.
This new approach to learning drew me into the mechanics of research. When something piqued my curiosity, I bought the books, records, DVDs etc. to learn and understand as much as I could about my current interest. This became a lifelong trait. As I stood in the Imperial War Museum shop browsing shelves of books about World War II, my old desire to “get into” a subject was right there with me.
I bought books about different stages of WWII and, as is my way, read them in the order the events occurred. I chose a book on Dunkirk, two on The Battle of Britain, one on the Great Escape, one on The Dambusters and one on D-Day. Just enough to get me started!
My research into World War II begins
After reading Hugh Sebag-Montefiore’s epic on Dunkirk, I read Tim Clayton and Phil Craig’s Finest Hour and Matthew Parker’s The Battle of Britain. I bought the DVD of Finest Hour and read Stephen Bungay’s Most Dangerous Enemy and Patrick Bishop’s Fighter Boys. By now I was completely obsessed with the events of the summer of 1940.
What I struggled to get my head round, and still do, is that the young Fighter Boys of the RAF, known as ‘The Few’, were exactly that. Young. Aged 18, 19, 20 and charged with the defence of their country and, without exaggeration, the defence of the free world. Their stories gripped me. I started buying all the books I could lay my hands on, particularly those by the pilots themselves. Sixteen years on, I’m still reading them.
Next I decided I wanted something tangible from the Battle, anything really. On eBay I lost out on an Irvin flying jacket and some genuine Spitfire parts but won a book signed by a number of The Few.
One of the signatures rang a bell in some part of my mind, that of Wing Commander John Freeborn. I seemed to remember my mum having a friend called John Freeborn sometime in the early 1980s. An email exchange with her confirmed the two John Freeborns were indeed the same person. She filled me in on her friendship and said that they had lost touch and she assumed he had died.
A surprise family connection with one of The Few
Whilst researching him, I came across a website advertising a signing event where you could meet some of The Few and get books, aviation prints and other memorabilia signed. One of The Few in attendance was to be John Freeborn. Through the organiser of the event, I was able to introduce myself to John.
He said he would very much like to get in touch with my mum again. Addresses were exchanged and very quickly they were in touch again after some 25 plus years. And so I have had the privilege of spending many hours with John, getting to know him and enjoying his war stories.
One of the books I bought was the hard-to-find Men of The Battle of Britain by Kenneth G Wynn. This book provides a potted biography of each of the 2,917 allied airmen who flew operationally in The Battle of Britain.
The discovery of the Merseyside Few
Dipping in and out of it I was taken aback to find that a number of pilots killed in action were actually buried in Liverpool and Wirral. I had kind of assumed most pilots would be buried in and around Kent and Sussex. So, I went through Wynn’s book, pilot by pilot, making a note of those laid to rest, not only on Merseyside, but in the North West of England.
I spent much of the summer of 2009 touring cemeteries and grave yards in search of pilots’ graves. I joined The Battle of Britain Historical Society so I could formally adopt any of the graves that didn’t have a carer. In all I’ve visited around 24 graves from Windermere to Egton-with-Newland, from Macclesfield, Poynton and Delemere to Marple and St Helen’s.
And so we come to the purpose of this work. With the deaths of Bill Stone, Henry Allingham and Harry Patch, 2009 saw the passing of the First World War generation. This focussed my mind on what I wanted to do.
This work is my tribute to them.
The Merseyside Few are:
• Pilot Officer Jindřich Bartoš – West Derby Cemetery
• Flight Lieutenant Thomas Daniel Humphrey Davy – Anfield Cemetery
• Flight Officer John Fraser Drummond – Thornton Garden of Rest
• Pilot Officer David Evans – St Andrews Church Bebington
• Sgt Stanley Allen Fenemore – Allerton Cemetery
• Flight Officer John Connell Freeborn – Liverpool Road Cemetery, Ainsdale
• Flight Lieutenant Kenneth McLeod Gillies – Thornton Garden of Rest
• Sgt Otto Hanzlíček – West Derby Cemetery
• Sgt Raymond Towers Holmes – Rake Lane Cemetery Wallasey
• Flight Lieutenant James Hayward Little – Grange Cemetery West Kirby
• Flight Officer Reginald Frank Rimmer – Grange Cemetery West Kirby
• Flight Lieutenant George Edward Bowes Stoney – St Helen’s Church Sefton
• Pilot Officer Norman Sutton – St Helens Cemetery
• Pilot Officer Wladyslaw Szulkowski – West Derby Cemetery
Members of The Few with connections to Liverpool and Wirral:
• Sgt Pilot Cyril Stanley Bamberger – worked at Port Sunlight
• Flight Lieutenant Sydney Howarth Bazley – born Southport
• Flight Officer Harold Arthur Cooper Bird-Wilson – educated Liverpool College
• Pilot Officer Michael Featherstone Briggs – educated Oundle School Liverpool
• Flight Officer Allan Walter Naylor Britton – born Wallasey
• Sgt Owen Valentine Burns – born Birkenhead
• Sgt Douglas Frederick Corfe – born Hoylake
• Sgt John Leslie Feather – born Liverpool
• Squadron Leader Thomas Percy Gleave – born Liverpool
• Flight Officer Douglas Hamilton Grice – born Wallasey
• Sgt Leonard Jowitt – of Huyton (formerly Seaforth)
• Flight Lieutenant William Johnson “Jack” Leather – born West Derby
• Sgt Charles White MacDougal – born Garston
• Sgt Edward Manton – born Bebington
• Flight Officer Peter Gerald Hugh Matthews – born Liverpool
• Sgt Walter Maxwell – born Meols
• Flight Officer John Colin Mungo-Park – born Wallasey
• Pilot Officer Thomas Francis Neil – born Bootle
• Pilot Officer Derrick Lang Ryalls – born West Kirby
• Flight Lieutenant Andrew Thomas Smith – of Fulwood Park
• Flight Lieutenant Edward Brian Bretherton Smith – born Formby
• Flight Sgt Harry Steere – born Birkenhead
• Flight Sgt Jack Steere – born Birkenhead
• Pilot Officer Ian Welsh Sutherland – of Liverpool
• Flight Lieutenant Douglas Herbert Watkins – born Birkenhead
• Flight Officer John Terrance Webster- born West Derby
• Sgt Pilot Alfred Whitby – born West Derby
• Squadron Leader W H R Whitty – born Litherland attended Liverpool College and University
• Sub-Lieutenant Thomas Victor Worrall – born Runcorn