F/Lt Ray (Hindoo) Henderson

[Andy Long]

I'm in the process of completing a book on the biographies of several fighter pilots from my locality, and I see on this excellent site we have many Italian historians and researchers.

One of the biographies is about F/Lt William Raymond (Hindoo) Henderson, who served with 602 Sqn in the UK, before departing to North Africa via Cyprus with 213. He had a short spell attached to 73 Sqn, before becoming tour expired and spent a short while on ferry duties. He the joined 92 Sqn, and went to 601 as a flight commander in January 1944.

He was shot down and killed on March 7th 1944, by Siegfried Lemke of JG2 near Cori, and his body wasn't found until 1947. On his last flight he was flying Spitfire VIII JF806, and I was wondering if any of our Italian friends had found the site. Any information on this would be greatly appreciated in finishing the chapter off.

[Nick Beale]

Just wondering how you had narrowed it down to Lemke shooting down F/L Henderson. Four Spitfires were claimed in the period 09.26 - 09.45: two by Lemke, one by I./JG 2's Hptm. Adalbert Sommer and one by Ofw. Franz Malsch of I./JG 4 (5km West of Cori). Only Henderson's aircraft was lost however.

601's ORB mentions only that Henderson "did not see 2 E/A which appeared behind him", not specifying whether these were Bf 109s or Fw 190s.

If you've got more on this action, I'm interested, having done some work on it myself. See:

http://www.ghostbombers.com/JG2/jg2frame.html
http://www.ghostbombers.com/JG2/7marchcl.html
http://www.ghostbombers.com/JG2/601.html

Have you tried the Ministry of Defence's Air Historical Branch? They were very helpful to me over a report on a crashed Mosquito and its crew in Italy, found after the Allies occupied the relevant area in 1945.

[Andy Long]

Excellent work there Nick. I have pm'd you.

Kind Regards

Andy