The grainy photo attached was taken in India in the summer/autumn of 1944.
This is Flight Lieutenant Richard Alvin Campbell, known simply to his friends as Dick. He was an Assiniboia man and the son of听Richard Robert and Elise F. Campbell.
He was killed on October 10, 1944, while piloting a Mosquito for an air/engine test.听
My dad, Alf Pridmore, was his navigator/wireless operator and he would have been beside Dick (a two-man crew), but fate intervened, as dad was told to stand down by an engineering officer who took his place.
Shortly after take-off, the airplane was struck by a hawk and the main wing spar gave way. Both the pilot and engineering officer were killed. I am writing this, because my dad was told to stand down. Such is fate.
As we remember V-J Day, I wonder if your readers might be able to help me? I'm not sure whether Dick, who was just 25 when he died, had a wife or a girl back home.
Dad was able to come home in 1945, but he never forgot Dick Campbell.
Dad tried to find Dick's family after the war, but this was a difficult task in the pre-internet days.
I'd really like to find his family, whether they be cousins, nephews, nieces.
I'm sure someone remembers him in Assiniboia. I'd like to say to that we remembered him too.
This is the crew鈥檚 backstory a few months before the tragic incident in October 1944. In the summer of 1944, they'd flown their Mosquito from RAF Portreath, Cornwall (not far from where I live today), out across the Bay of Biscay en route for Rabat Sale at 35,000 ft.
On the third leg of the flight from Tripoli to Cairo, they lost a port engine due to coolant loss. They made an emergency landing at Tobruk, where Dick performed an excellent single engine landing despite coming in on a left circuit (very difficult apparently, due to the fact the port engine had failed) and received applause from the ground crews, who were expecting the worst.
The Packard-built engine in the aircraft had been sabotaged in a U.S. factory.
Editor鈥檚 note: some German POWs were assigned to work in Allied factories during the Second World War 鈥� a POW likely sabotaged the engine. Also, V-J Day stands for stands for Victory in Japan听Day, marking the event in the Second World War, when Japan surrendered to the Allies on August 15, 1945.
Additionally, contradictory information on Richard 鈥淒ick鈥� Campbell, son of Richard and Ella (Simonson), stated the RCAF flight lieutenant from Assiniboia died on a reconnaissance mission in India in 1944 (Heritage 鈥�85 Town of Assiniboia, p. 181).听听
To get in touch with Geoff, email him at [email protected].
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