Info on 103 Fairey Battle losses on the continent during mid-May, 1940

[Larry Hickey]

Dave, Martin and Revi16,

Thanks for all the time and effort you put in on your answers. At the EOE Working Group, we're still debating whether it is worth it to try and locate first names and crew positions for all British crewmen involved in a/c loss & damage incidents from 01.09.39 through 31.12.40. Our parallel Luftwaffe DB for the period, which includes many thousands of entries, does include all known first names and crew positions. I'd guess that more than 95% of these now have that information recorded. So I'm inclined to try and do the same for the comprehensive British DB we're working on. But Peter Cornwell feels that the British records just don't well lend themselves to doing this on a comprehensive basis. If there are readers of this board who are willing to help make this happen, we'll shoot for it, but it will take a lot of digging by a lot of volunteers to make this work. Remember, we're trying to do ALL British losses, RAF FC, BC, Coastal Command and RN. Training losses are not included. Obviously full names are known for all FC participants in the BoB, but there were at least hundreds more assigned to BC, CC and RN that would have to be researched very tediously. As the researchers who most care about this, should we do this or not? Can we get enough help to make this happen? I'm willing to post the questions, if you're willing to help us do this.

A special note for Revi16, I'm well familiar with all of these a/c, except for possibly the third one in the last post. I can't read the code clearly on this a/c and the background doesn't look familiar. It may have a PH SQ code (12 SQ) rather than PM (103 SQ). Can anyone help confirm the correct code and identity for this photo, perhaps with other views showing the code more clearly? Although I haven't tried to comprehensively put a number on them, I think that we've assembled a collection of contemporary photos of Battle FL or crashes of at least 50%, maybe considerably more, of all those lost during the WC. For example, of the dozen lost in Luxembourg during the first two days of the WC, it appears that we have photos of at least 10 of them at the crash site, including several that were little more than wreckage.

Thanks to all for the continuing help and support.

Regards,