Skywriters
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LETTER of the MONTH
The advert from The Aeroplane 80 years ago featuring No 218 Squadron Stirling W7530 (left), and a picture of its crew.
E
ighty years ago this month, The Aeroplane included an advert for Short Brothers which featured a Stirling I, W7530/Q-HA. As the son of the navigator on this Stirling, I thought your readers might be interested in the fate of the aircraft and its crew. W7530 was built by Austin Motors at Longbridge and was first delivered to No 218 Squadron at Marham, Norfolk on 8 May 1942. It was the replacement for Stirling R9313, which had crashed in Sussex on 5 May 1942 having been shot down in a ‘friendly fire’ incident involving a Hurricane/Turbinlite Havoc combination based at Tangmere. Thankfully, all the crew survived, although on the night of 20-21 June they were not so lucky. W7530 departed Marham at 23.30hrs under the command of 40-year-old Sqn Ldr Harold Ashworth, joining 286 other bombers whose target was the German port of Emden. On the way back, the aircraft was intercepted by a German night fighter over the Netherlands and, despite the heroic efforts of the crew, was shot down, eventually
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crashing in a field at Wadway, north-west of Hoorn, a city north of Amsterdam. Sadly, Ashworth and the upper gunner, 19-year-old Sgt William Watt, died in the crash, while the front gunner, 22-yearold Sgt William Whitehead, perished as his parachute failed to open. The remaining five crew members bailed out successfully, including my late father Plt Off Alan Green, the
navigator, who had just turned 22. After a couple of days spent hiding in a copse, supported by Dutch farmers, Alan made his way towards Amsterdam to meet the resistance, although he was arrested at a nearby tram station and became a PoW, eventually ending up in Stalag Luft III, famous for the ‘Wooden Horse’ and the ‘Great Escape’. Meanwhile, the other four crew members were quickly taken
Stuart Green revisits the memorial to W7530.
prisoner, the second pilot, Flt Lt Des Plunkett, and the wireless operator, Reg Attwood, also ending up in Stalag Luft III, while Sgts Thomas Mulroy and William Hayden, the rear gunner and flight engineer respectively, were sent to Camp 357. Ashworth had been a celebrated civilian pilot before the war, having gained his licence in 1928 and competed in several air races; he was posthumously awarded the DFC in June 1943. Des Plunkett went on to play a major role in the ‘Great Escape’, firstly as the ‘map-maker’ and then as the 13th man out of the tunnel. He evaded capture for two weeks and travelled the furthest of all the British escapers, but was arrested on the Austrian border. Having suffered weeks of torture and interrogation at the hands of the Gestapo in Prague, he was eventually sent to Stalag Luft I for the remainder of the war. This was my father’s 23rd mission and his 16th with Ashworth as captain, although they had in fact flown together a total of 33 times on training and operational duties prior to this fateful night. My father’s
AEROPLANE JANUARY 2023
