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Some pictures of my grandfather's service (427 Bomber Squ.)


Cold_Gambler

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Went to dinner at my Aunt's place tonight.

I'd asked her if she could pull out some of his war-time stuff for me to look at. Here are some pictures:

My grandfather served with 427 Bomber Squadron from '42 until '45:

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He worked in the intelligence section (aerial reconnaissance). Here's a picture of his kit bag, "wedge" and a cannister of undeveloped film negatives:

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The images on the negatives appear to be of potential targets, many bridges and a railhead next to a river. I say potential targets because there is no apparent damage to the structures and a complete absence of bomb craters; most of the footage was taken at high altitude with a camera pointed straight down, but some of the images were taken at lower altitude (~1000-2000 ft is my guess) and sideways from a position just behind the trailing edge of the aircraft.

Here's a Lanc; note the sheep (below #1 engine) :)

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Here's an interesting photograph (sorry about the "flash-glare"- I suck)- it's difficult enough to see in the original but there are about 8 lancasters heading home, one of which is trailing a long plume of fuel from the starboard wing tank:

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This is his mess kit:

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And here are his medals:

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Nothing of great note, mostly recognition for his service.

I'm quite sure there are more reconnaissance photos/negatives. I have a (mistaken?) recollection that there is a large tube (approx. 3 feet long by 2 in diameter) in my aunts basement but she didn't seem sure what I was talking about.

Hope you found this of interest, sorry about the size of some of these-

C_G

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  • 1. DDz Quorum

Thanks M8, nice to see history like this.

Amazing that his kit bag and mess kit are still there, and the tin of negatives sounds fascinating.

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nice pictures mate- Its nice to see historical aviation items with links to our squad mates. And you should not be so modest , your grandfathers service history , like so many others, is much appreciated by many in UK .

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  • 2 weeks later...

My pleasure guys. I knew you'd appreciate the pics.

There was other stuff:

-his ID card, pay-book, a RAF issue correspondence case, other pictures of that same lancaster, pictures of his mates, a picture of the King and Queen apparently on a visit to the airbase, some pictures of a sea-side village. Very interesting correspondence from my grandmother in Canada to him (she was not especially happy that he'd gone overseas leaving her with my 2-5 year-old father :wink: ).

I'm really hoping that we can find that large tube of reconnaissance prints; that little tube of negatives was interesting but showed essentially three photo runs: so most of the pictures overlap. That tube, as I recall it, contained any developed images of different locations.

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