Archives for 2011

With many thanks indeed, largely to James Boyle & Brian Angel, we’ve been able to update a number of photos around the site. Have a look at the excellent photos of James Boyle’s crew and there’s a few new photos of the Van de Wal family on the Gerald Hood Story.

Thanks to the assistance of his son Alan, we’re delighted to have updated the biography of Bill Paston-Williams, a consumate aviator.

Alan Barrow’s footnote speaks for all of us involved in telling the story of LM658.

…have just been advised by Mr Mike Monitz, a former pupil of the Royal Russell School that some of the senior boys used to sometimes take a highly illicit visit to a local pub called “The Sandrock”…surely Gerald Hood would have known of the place, but what he would not have known is that the local pub bore the same name as the man who would supervise his execution in just a few years time!

Some additional information & photos added to the biography of Laurence Roy Watts. We’ll be adding more photos & information into other biographies as we receive them.

Please do sign the guestbook & say hello if you’ve found this site useful, fascinating, though-provoking or even to highlight any typing errors!

Paddy from “The Fedora Lounge” 1940’s culture forum, we would like to know more about the origins of the very interesting material you have posted, feel free to get in touch sir!

Glad to see that the LM 658 website is yeilding the results I had hoped it would! Only recently we have had contact from the family of Flt Lt “Stevie” Stevens who took over as the skipper of the crew left behind by Flt Lt Holland after his tragic loss on his “second dickie” trip. This comes hot on the heels of contact from the family of Flt Lt Carl Woodworth, the original navigator from Gerald Hood’s crew and of course F/O James Boyle and family whose memoirs you can read on here…Mr Boyle was Chris Hollands original navigator!…Keep the contacts coming!

Today,webmaster Duncan and myself have been rather busy, the mini biography of Laurence Watts has now been added along with a link to his last letter home. We also got our heads together (well I sat and watched!) and started to insert our collection of photos into the text of the site.

Just tidied up the links to crew biographies from the main Crew List page and interesting to see that our automated spam filter had already trapped our first person trying to put a spammy comment into the guestbook.

We’ve just installed a guestbook so feel free to leave your feedback – good & bad!

I’m delighted to be able to share with you the fascinating memoirs of  Flying Officer James H Boyle (RCAF retired).

Just click the Memoirs link on the menu bar.

Many thanks indeed to Mr Boyle for writing them down for us to use here.