More stories from Larry

Larry wrote some more on the 12 O’Clock High Forum.

There’s more.

Photo of Tony Hauxwell of 238 Squadron in Australia.

Tony Hauxwell

He was my dad’s best friend and came from a mining village in Nottinghamshire. Luckily they were together from February 1942 when they joined 44th Entry at RAF Halton, then possibly at 575 Squadron (my dad can’t remember if he was with him at RAF Broadwell) then 48 Squadron (prior to D-Day / Arnhem until late 1944) and then both got posted to 238 Squadron! After 238 Squadron was disbanded Tony and dad went to Balikpapan, Borneo and immediately post war, circa 1947, they both got posted to 3 FTS at Feltwell for pilot training.

Was there a policy in place during WW2 to keep friends together or was it pure luck?

When they both got their ‘wings’ in 1948, dad got posted to Transport Command and flew Avro Yorks in the Berlin Airlift while Tony got posted to Fighter Command. Sadly Tony was killed in VZ518 of No.66 Squadron RAF, crashed 12th April 1951 on Sliddens Moss while on a cine gun exercise from RAF Linton-on-Ouse near York.

More information on the accident here.

Excerpt

At 9:15am on Thursday 12th April 1951 a flight of four Meteor jet aircraft took off from RAF Linton-on-Ouse near York for a training flight.  Flying the lead pair were Flight Lieutenant David Merryweather Leach (WA791) and Flying Officer Tony Hauxwell (VZ518).  The flight was to climb to around 30,000ft where the two pairs would carry out attacks on each other.  The weather forecast for the day was for complete cloud cover from 1,500ft to 20,000ft, on reaching 30,000ft the four aircraft were still in thick cloud and radioed Linton on Ouse to inform them that the flight would be returning home.